


a life in your shape

by universces



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Childhood Friends, M/M, Mutual Pining, how many times can i make these bitches hold hands challenge, jason blossom isn't dead but he also ain't here, set before and during s1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24487423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/universces/pseuds/universces
Summary: "I just want it to be you and me forever, Jug.”“Don’t be silly, Arch,” Jughead says, his voice so quiet that it's hard to hear. “Why would you want that?”“Because I love you,” Archie shrugs, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like it doesn’t really matter at all.(or, what to do when the past threatens to swallow you whole, and how to add shape to the love in your heart)
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones
Comments: 20
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i finally learned how to read and write so i present to you: my magnum opus, also known as "how many commas can i cram into a single sentence?" i will literally never write anything better than this ever.
> 
> this fic is dedicated to that one jarchie fan edit/manip (i think it was called "just a stupid kiss"??), the day you were taken off youtube was the darkest of my life. you changed me from a casual shipper to a patron of the jarchie longcon movement. i miss you so much and think about you everyday. RIP.
> 
> i've written this 12k monster of a first chapter (god knows how long the rest of this fic will be) in a bid to answer the greatest unsolved mystery in the riverdale-verse: what the fuck happened between these two before episode 1?
> 
> songs i listened to writing this (aka the Vibes for this chapter):  
> \- strawberry blond by mitski  
> \- be my baby by the ronettes  
> \- cruel summer by taylor swift (trust me ok!! especially in section vi omg)

**part i:** **_collision_ **

“When I first met you, you were it for me. Everything I could have ever wanted.”

**i.**

_ I love everybody because I love you, _ _  
_ _ When you stood up, walked away, barefoot, _ _  
_ _ And the grass where you lay _ _  
_ _ Left a bed in your shape, _ _  
_ _ I looked over it, and I ached. _

\- Strawberry Blond, Mitski

Archie Andrews and Jughead Jones lie on the floor of Jughead’s tree house, legs tangled, gaps in their teeth, feeling rebellious for sneaking out the back door while FP watches TV in the dark of the living room. They are seven years old and they talk about the size of the universe.

“Did you know that there are more stars in the sky than bits of sand on all the beaches in the world?” Jughead tells little Archie, who grins at him.

“That’s so cool!” Archie responds. “Did you know that you can buy stars and give them names?”

“They must be fricking expensive.”

“If I bought a star, I would name it Jughead.”

“That’s a stupid name for a star.”

“Nuh-uh. What would you call yours then?”

Jughead thinks for a moment, before smirking at Archie. “Fart-face.”

The two giggle. “Tell me another,” Archie insists.

“Okay, what about…the earth can fit into the sun more than 1 million times?”

Archie doesn’t really have a response for that, so he settles for a simplistic “Wow,” in an attempt to encourage Jughead to go on.

“And, and, did you know that we’ll never be able to reach the edge of the universe, because it keeps growing all the time?”

The two lapse into a brief silence, pondering the alignment of the stars and feeling the weight of the entire universe fall onto their small shoulders.

“How do you know all this stuff, Jug?” Archie asks quietly, tracing the outline of the wooden planks that make up the floor with the tip of his finger.

“I like to read about it,” Jughead says.

“Nuh-uh,” Archie protests. “I thought you only read those comic books about the superheroes and stuff.”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “No, silly, I save those to read with you. But I’ve gotta read other stuff in between. So I read stuff I know you wouldn’t like.”

“Hey, I like the stars!” Archie says indignantly.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t want to read about it in a book,” Jughead points out, and Archie sighs.

“Yeah…guess I just like listening to you talk about it.”

Jughead tilts his head to look at Archie, and Archie mirrors him. They lay side by side, locked in some kind of staring contest until Jughead looks up at the roof again.

“Reading about space and stuff...the universe can be scary sometimes.”

Archie knows the feeling. A few months earlier he’d watched twenty minutes of  _ Alien _ when it was on TV, and that alone was enough to make him give up on his fleeting dream of being an astronaut. He doesn’t think that’s what Jughead means, though.

“Why?”

“It’s so big, and we’re so small. It’s like nothing we do even matters at all.”

The concept is a little too much for Archie’s young mind to comprehend, but he tries. He has to try, because Jughead looks sad, and Archie wants nothing less than to see Jughead sad.

“Maybe the universe is massive, but that doesn’t mean you don’t matter,” Archie says, trying to think of the right words to say. “To me, you’re as big as the universe…you’re worth more than all the stars in the sky…and…and…you’re more important than the sun…”

“Nothing’s more important than the sun, Archie,” Jughead says, a blush rising in his cheeks. “Without the sun it would be night all the time, and nothing would grow, and we would all prune up like you do when you stay in the bath for too long.”

“You’re more important to the sun to me,” Archie insists. “Without you, it would be dark all the time, and I wouldn’t grow and I’d start pruning up.”

They laugh, but the weight of the metaphor settles in Jughead’s heart, even though he thinks Archie probably didn’t intend for his words to have such meaning when he said them.

“I think the two of us could go to the edge of the universe, Juggy,” Archie mumbles.

“You think so?”

“Yeah…as long as we were together…” Archie grabs Jughead’s hand, and Jughead lets him.

“Do you reckon we’ll be friends forever, Jug?” Archie asks in a small voice, as though he’s suddenly scared that the universe will defy him.

“I think it says so in the stars.” Jughead smiles, and the two lapse into silence once more.

Later, they sneak back into the house, carefully skipping over creaky floorboards only to be caught by FP at the bottom of the stairs. He pretends to be disgruntled, but struggles to hide his smile as he shepherds a sheepish Jughead and Archie back into their beds.

Once the lights are out and they’re all tucked in, the two fall back into thoughts of starry nights and a million suns, and fall asleep side by side.

  
  


**ii.**

_ That is why all the girls in town _ _  
_ _ Follow you all around _ _  
_ _ Just like me, they long to be _ _  
_ _ Close to you _

\- (They Long to Be) Close to You, Carpenters

Jughead waits for Archie by their classroom door at Riverdale Elementary School, shoelaces untied and his new beanie too big for his small head and flopping over his eyes. They are eight years old, and Archie’s taking a very long time.

Jughead stands on his tiptoes, trying to peer into the classroom through the small window in the door. He’s too small and can’t see anything except for the papier-mache planets hanging from the ceiling - among them Jughead’s Mercury hangs next to Archie’s Mars. Despite his failings, he persists, until he mis-steps and his shoelaces get tangled and he promptly falls over.

“Juggy!” a small voice cries, and the sound of sneakers scuff on the linoleum floor as Jughead’s green eyes meet blue. “Are you okay?” Betty Cooper asks him, offering her dainty hand to help pull him up.

“I’m okay,” Jughead says - and he is - but Betty, in her totally-Betty way, still looks concerned.

“What are you doing?” she asks him, her eyes sliding past him to the door of the classroom.

“Waiting for Archie…we’re meant to go to his house, but Mrs. Gribrock is still talking to him.”

“Oh,” Betty says. “Well, if you-“

“Elizabeth!”

The shrill voice of Betty’s mother rings down the hallway. Betty looks at Jughead apologetically. “I’ll see you tomorrow…” she tells him, before scurrying off down the hall.

Jughead blows a breath of impatience out of his lips, and begins following the small patterns on the floor beneath his feet, skipping over flecks of yellow in a bid to pass the time. After what seems like an eternity, the door opens and Mrs. Gribrock ushers a somber-looking Archie into the hallway.

“Oh, Jughead! I didn’t realise you were waiting, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Gribrock smiles kindly. Jughead gives her a toothy grin in response, because he knows that’s the nice thing to do.

Mrs. Gribrock turns to Archie, and says to him “I’ll speak to your mom and dad about this, okay? Don’t worry yourself too much, Archie. We’ll figure something out.” She pats him on the shoulder, before opting for one more sunny smile. “You two have fun, but don’t get into any trouble.”

“We won’t, Mrs. Gribrock,” Jughead assures her, and she closes the door leaving Archie and Jughead alone in the hallway.

“What was that all about?” Jughead asks, and Archie lets out a sigh that carries too much weight for somebody so small.

“She says I’m too far behind in my reading level,” Archie tells him, his eyes cast towards the floor. “She says if I don’t get any better, I have to stay back and do second grade all over.”

Jughead’s mouth hangs open, shocked at the unfairness of the situation. “But you can-too read. You read comic books all the time!”

Archie, seemingly alarmed by the abnormal volume of Jughead’s voice, drags him towards the front doors so that Mrs. Gribrock won’t hear them.

“She says that doesn’t count.”

“Well that’s just stupid,” Jughead huffs. “She doesn’t know anything!”

The corners of Archie’s mouth curve upwards slightly, and the subject is forgotten as the two scramble round the block to Archie’s house.

When Jughead arrives at school the next morning, he sees Betty and Archie with their heads together at the back of the classroom. This in itself is not uncommon – Betty lives next door to Archie and comes to play with them sometimes. But the seriousness on their little faces is what makes Jughead wary.

He walks towards them slowly, as if moving too fast might startle them, and watches as Betty hands Archie a very dog-eared paperback from her backpack.

“What’s going on?” Jughead asks. Betty and Archie smile at him.

“I’m going to help Archie with his reading. We can’t let him not be in our class,” Betty tells Jughead, eyes wide.

Jughead feels silly for not thinking of something like that himself. And annoyed that Betty was the one who was going to help Archie. Boys weren’t meant to get so close to girls unless they wanted to kiss them. At least, that’s what Reggie Mantle said when Kevin Keller and Cheryl Blossom were playing hopscotch together the other day. Jughead doesn’t get the chance to say this to Betty and Archie, though, because Mrs. Gribrock claps her hands together, which means they’re meant to sit down and listen.

Only, Betty’s sitting next to Archie, even though Jughead normally does, and she already has her colorful pencil case and sparkly notebook set neatly in front of her, so it doesn’t look like she’s going to move. And the other two seats on the table are full, so Jughead doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do, and when he looks at Archie, Archie’s not paying any attention to him at all, like he hasn’t even noticed that Betty’s stolen his seat.

“Jughead! Time to sit down!” Mrs. Gribrock singsongs, and so Jughead has to go and sit next to Josie McCoy, who never shares her colored pencils and talks far too much about how she’s going to be a famous singer when she grows up.

All throughout the lesson, Jughead can’t stop looking over at Betty and Archie. Betty lets Archie borrow her pencils, even though he chews the ends of them. They laugh at something Archie’s drawn on his paper. Archie lets Betty copy him after she goes to the bathroom. And Archie doesn’t look his way once.

“What are you looking at?” Josie asks him, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Nothing,” Jughead mumbles, turning back to the desk and hunching over it.

“Were you looking at Betty and Archie? Do you have a crush on her or something?”

“No,” Jughead says sullenly. If he were to have a crush on anyone, it definitely wouldn’t be on her.

“Okay then,” Josie replies, unbothered, before turning back to her desk as well and continuing to color in her big yellow sun.

At recess, Jughead follows Betty and Archie out to the playground, a few steps behind. As they run down to the jungle gym, Jughead veers off to the right, heading to the bike rack on the side of the gym. There he sits, next to the bikes, back against the wall, glaring moodily at where Betty and Archie are playing with some other kids.

He follows Archie with his eyes as the other boy runs, laughs, calls out to the others. And then Archie stops. He starts looking around the playground as though he’s lost something, searching high and low, until he turns around and finally spots Jughead in his not-so-hidden hiding spot. Jughead glares at him, but Archie either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, running over to him with a goofy grin on his face.

“Jughead! What are you doing over here?” 

“Nothing,” Jughead says in the same sulky voice he’d used with Josie.

“Okay, then come play. We’re doing tag. Reggie’s It.”

“Go play with  _ Betty _ .”

Archie frowns, confused. “What’s wrong with Betty?”

“She stole my seat. I had to sit next to Josie and you didn’t even care.”

“Yeah I did! I was just trying to be nice to Betty so she helps me with reading!” Archie exclaims, looking very worried at the prospect that he’s upset Jughead. Jughead tries to remain steadfast in his sulking, but he finds himself softening.

“I don’t want to go on the playground,” he says, arms crossed.

“So we won’t go to the playground. We can go play cops and robbers under the oak tree instead. And tomorrow I’ll make sure I sit next to you.”

Jughead considers this. “And every day after that, too?”

“Yup. Every day and forever.”

“Okay then,” Jughead says, and when they walk past the playground, he’s pleased to note that Archie doesn’t glance back once.

A few weeks later, Jughead is sitting in the big tree on the edge of the playground, waiting for Archie to emerge from the classroom. He is meant to be completing his reading test right now. Within a few minutes Jughead will know whether or not he and Archie will be separated forever. Minutes tick by. Jughead watches as Kevin Keller and Reggie Mantle wrestle in the sandbox, unnoticed by Miss Hartigan, who is instead preoccupied with helping Cheryl Blossom make some kind of daisy chain. Out of the corner of his eye, Jughead sees the door open and a flash of red hair appear. He begins to make his way down from the tree, but Archie is already rushing towards him. Only he isn’t. Because underneath the tree is a small girl with big, blue eyes and a blonde ponytail.

“Betty! Betty! I did it!” Archie yells, racing towards the girl and tackling her with a hug. Only it isn’t a hug. Archie puts his lips onto Betty’s and leaves her with a big, sloppy kiss. The stupidness of the whole thing made Jughead’s cheeks go red. “Marry me, Betty!” Archie says, holding onto Betty’s hands, and Betty goes slightly pink.

“Oh, Archie,” she says. “We’re too young. Ask me when we’re eighteen and I’ll say yes.”

Surely it was a bit too early to be thinking about getting married, Jughead thinks. Who knew what could happen within the ten years until they turned eighteen. Maybe Betty would move away like Harvey Kinkle had the year before and they would never see her again. Maybe Archie would meet somebody else, somebody he liked better.

Jughead ponders the kind of girl that Archie would like better than Betty. She would have to like comic books, and video games too. She would have to be funny, and she would have to like burgers at Pop’s. She would have to be the right balance of adventurous and level-headed, so that she wouldn’t let Archie do stupid things. She would have to love dogs and be the kind of girl that Archie could tell all of his secrets to.

Jughead stops when he realises he’s describing himself. But that’s silly – Jughead isn’t allowed to be the kind of person that Archie would marry. At least, that’s what his mom said when she’d found out that her cousin Benjamin was going to marry a boy. He’d heard her tell his dad that it wasn’t right for two boys to marry each other.

But Jughead can’t stop thinking about it now. What would it be like to marry Archie? They would have sleepovers every night, but they’d live in their own house so that they could make chocolate chip pancakes in the middle of the night whenever they wanted. And if they ever got invited anywhere, they’d have to be invited together. And they could get a dog, and take it on walks together. And Archie would give Jughead big, sloppy kisses, like the one he’d just given Betty.

Jughead shakes the thought from his mind, watches as Archie shows Betty the sticker Mrs. Gribrock had given him as a reward, and tries not to think about a life in Archie’s shape.

  
  


**iii.**

_ I wish I believed you when you told me this was my home. _

\- Hard Feelings, Lorde

Jughead sits in the front seat of his dad’s old pick-up truck, frost fogging the windows and biting his ears as he swings his legs back and forth, back and forth. He is nine years old, and his dad said he would be gone for ten minutes, tops.

It’s been forty-seven.

His dad told him to stay in the car,  _ no matter what _ , but it’s starting to get dark and it’s very cold in the cab and Jughead is very hungry. FP had promised they’d go to Pop’s when he got back, and there’s not much for Jughead to do in the truck except dream about how good one of Pop Tate’s burgers would be right now. He wishes he’d thought to ask his dad what he should do if he took longer than ten minutes.

He leans over and uses the sleeve of his jacket to wipe at the window so he can look outside. It’s not like any part of Riverdale that he’s ever been to before, and he wonders how far away his house is from here, wonders which side of the river he’s on.

Fifty minutes. He can’t feel his toes anymore. In this amount of time he could have watched  _ two _ episodes of  _ The Twilight Zone _ .

It doesn’t look like his dad’s coming back. Jughead wonders what must have happened to him. Maybe he got caught up helping somebody with something. He remembers a story Archie told him about how one time his dad was late home, even though he’d promised Archie that they would play catch, because he’d had to drive one of the guys who worked for him to the hospital. Maybe Jughead’s dad was taking someone to the hospital, or something like that.

Well then, he might not be back for quite a while, so it would probably be best if Jughead went and called for somebody else to come and get him. So he opens the door, clicks the lock and shuts it behind him, setting off down the street.

He doesn’t have any quarters for a payphone, so he’ll have to go inside one of the dodgy-looking establishments that line the street. He resolutely avoids the building called “The Whyte Wyrm” - having been to enough school assemblies about Stranger Danger to know that the big, angry-looking bikers out the front can’t be good news - instead opting for a small diner across the street, about half as nice as Pop’s and twice as greasy.

The bell chimes as he walks in, but none of the patrons look up. Jughead’s glad, because although none of the people inside the diner are wearing leather jackets like the bikers outside, they don’t look particularly friendly, either. He keeps his head down as he approaches the counter, not wanting to draw anymore attention to himself than absolutely necessary. He perches on his tiptoes to peer over the counter, and decides he’d much rather talk to the pretty, young, tired-looking waitress scrubbing the surface of the far side than the crabby-looking old one making coffee.

“Excuse me?” he says when he slinks over to her. She looks at him, a polite smile on her face. Her name-tag says  _ Annie _ on it. “Do you have a phone I can use please?”

She frowns a bit at that, and looks over his shoulder as though expecting to see someone else. But she shows him to the booth next to the kitchen nonetheless. Inside, he dials the only number he knows by heart: Archie’s.

“Hello?” It’s Archie’s mom that answers the phone.

“Hello, Mrs. Andrews. It’s Jughead. Can I speak to Mr. Andrews, please?”

“Hi, Jughead. You want to speak to Fred? Not Archie?”

“Not Archie. I need to talk to Mr. Andrews, please.”

“Okay then.” There’s some muffled noises and some murmuring, and then Fred’s voice is in his ear.

“Hey, Jug. What’s going on?”

“I can’t find my dad anywhere. He said he would only be gone for ten minutes but he’s been gone for ages.”

There’s a pause. “Are you at home, Jughead?”

“No.”

“Okay. Where are you then, son?”

“I’m not really sure. I’m in a diner. And across the street is some place called the  _ White Why-rum _ .”

Another pause, and Jughead can just make out Fred saying something away from the phone. “Okay, Jug. You hold tight, I’m gonna come get you. Twenty minutes, yeah?”

“Okay. Thank you, Mr. Andrews.”

“...I’ll see you soon.”

Jughead hangs up the phone and almost walks into the waitress on his way out. She had apparently been lingering nearby, listening to his conversation.

“You okay, kiddo?” she asks kindly, bending down to meet his eye level. “Are you here by yourself?”

Jughead’s not really sure what to do in this situation, because everyone always says that you shouldn’t talk to strangers, but the waitress seems really nice and he’s going to have to talk to her if he stays inside the diner. So, after a brief consideration, he decides to answer.

“I’m waiting for my friend’s dad to pick me up.”

“Okay,” she says, straightening up. “How about you come and sit up at the counter and I’ll make you a hot chocolate while you wait?”

Annie makes him a hot chocolate good enough to rival Pop Tate’s, and then whispers to him that the coffee in this diner tastes terrible, and that her hot chocolates are the only things good to drink. She asks him where he goes to school and what his favourite subject is, and he tells her that it’s reading. She tells him that when she was a kid she always wanted to be a writer. He tells her about Archie, and she smiles. He asks if she has a best friend, and she says she did, once, but not really anymore.

The bell above the door chimes and Fred walks in with Archie in tow. Upon spotting Jughead, Archie races across the floor to meet him.

“Hey Jug!” he exclaims, grabbing Jughead’s arm and pulling him off the stool he’s sitting on. Annie grins at the two of them as Fred approaches.

“Hi, kid,” Fred says. “You ready to go?”

Jughead nods and then turns to Annie. “Thank you for the hot chocolate.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, smiling again. Fred nods at her. Jughead’s not entirely sure what it means.

In the car, Fred tells Jughead that he’s spoken to his mother, and that they’ve agreed Jughead should spend the night at Archie’s house. Archie is endlessly excited because he gets to have a sleepover on a school night, and he talks a mile a minute about the new CD he’s got that Jughead can listen to, and there’s left over lasagna that his mom can heat up for them, and can they watch  _ The Simpsons  _ if it’s on tonight?

“Mr. Andrews? Where did my dad go?” Jughead asks quietly when Archie pauses for breath.

Fred glances at him quickly, then looks back at the road. He sighs. “I don’t know, Jug. But after I drop you and Archie off I’m going to go and look for him, okay?”

And he does. After depositing Archie and Jughead into the kitchen where Mary waits for them with lasagna, as promised, he heads right back out again.

Jughead, although he wants to be able to match Archie’s immovable enthusiasm, can’t stop his mind wandering to his father. He hadn’t thought about it before, but what if his dad had been hurt? Or maybe he’d gotten in trouble with one of the mean-looking guys in the leather jackets out the front of the Whyte Wyrm. Did Stranger Danger apply to adults as well as kids? If Fred were here, Jughead would ask him, but he doesn’t much feel like posing the question to Archie’s mom, so he leaves it be.

When they finish eating, Archie takes Jughead up to his room and plays his new CD. It’s the kind of stuff their dads listen to, with heavy drums and complicated guitar riffs. Archie gives a very convincing air guitar performance, at one point jumping up onto his bed and headbanging, performing for both an imaginary crowd and Jughead alone. Jughead can’t help but grin. The song finishes and Archie flops down sideways, legs hanging off the edge of the bed, exhausted and invigorated at the same time. After a moment, Jughead flops down next to him.

“I think I wanna learn the guitar,” Archie says between pants.

“You’ll be good at it, I bet,” Jughead tells him, because Archie’s good at everything.

Archie grins at him, reaching out to squeeze his hand. Neither of them lets go.

Fred’s back when they go downstairs for breakfast the next morning, making bacon and eggs and humming along to the radio. He looks tired, but also kinda happy at the same time.

“Alright boys, eat up,” he says, serving them generous helpings as they sit at the table. Archie digs in without a second thought, but Jughead hesitates, words sitting on the tip of his tongue and threatening to spill over.

“Mr. Andrews? Did you find my dad?”

Fred sits down next to Archie, across from Jughead, and looks him in the eye.

“Yeah, I found him. He’s at home now. I’m sure he’ll talk to you when you get home, okay kid?”

Jughead nods, and bites into a piece of toast.

When they get to school, they bump into Betty out on the front lawn. Jughead can’t tell if she was waiting for them - well, for Archie - or if she’d just been enjoying the winter sunshine while it lasted. He doesn’t really care, either. Archie really likes Betty, but Jughead doesn’t understand it. He thinks Betty is really annoying. And she’s always following Archie around and stuff. 

(And he’s never really forgiven her for the time she and Archie kissed.)

His opinion of her is not helped when she spots him and says “Jughead! Are you okay? I heard about your dad” with this concerned look on her face. Jughead isn’t sure what she heard, because he doesn’t even know what happened with his dad last night.

“Who told you?” he asks.

“My mom.” 

That makes a little bit of sense to Jughead, because  _ his _ mom is always saying stuff about how  _ Betty’s  _ mom likes to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong. Whatever that means.

“It doesn’t matter, because Jughead got to sleep at my house last night,” Archie is bragging. “And we got to have breakfast this morning  _ and _ come to school together.”

“That’s so cool,” Betty says wistfully. “My mom would never let me do that.”

The bell rings, so they head up the front steps and into the school, Archie talking about their mid-week sleepover all the way to class.

When Jughead’s mom picks him up that afternoon, she doesn’t say anything, and there’s something about the look on her face that stops Jughead from asking. His dad’s car is back in the driveway when they get home. His mom doesn’t spare it - or Jughead - a second glance, just cuts the ignition and walks briskly to the house, like she’s running late for something.

Jughead is slower. He’s not so eager to go inside - he never is lately. More and more, it seems, his parents spend the evenings yelling at each other, and if they’re not yelling at each other, they’re calling each other names, and if they’re not doing that they’re ignoring each other completely.

They don’t have dinner that night. Instead, his mom brings him a ham and cheese sandwich, which he eats in his room alone. He wonders what Archie’s having for dinner. Probably something good. And he’s probably eating at the table with his parents, and his parents are probably talking to each other with big smiles on their faces, and asking each other how their days were, and what they want to do this weekend.

It gets late. The alarm on his bedside table says it’s nine o’clock, but nobody has come upstairs to tell him to go to bed. He could stay up, just for the hell of it, but there’s not really much to do and he’s kinda tired anyway. So he gets into his pajamas and under the covers, telling himself good night, when he realises that he’s really thirsty. His mom didn’t bring him a glass of water with his meager dinner, so he hasn’t had a drink since lunchtime.

He debates waiting until morning, but now that he’s thought about it his throat is scratchy and he can’t think about anything else. So he gets back out of bed and tiptoes across his room, over the landing and down the stairs. He’s making his way to the kitchen when he hears voices coming from the living room. He freezes.

“What the hell were you thinking?” his mom is saying. She’s not shouting, but it sounds like she wishes she was.

“It was a  _ mistake _ , Gladys. No harm, no foul.”

His dad. Jughead hasn’t seen him since he got home, since he was unceremoniously ushered up to his room like he was on time-out.

“You left our son sitting in the car. He could have been there  _ all night _ !”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care so much for his wellbeing all of a sudden.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

They’re standing up. Jughead can tell because he can hear their footsteps pacing on the wooden floor. He imagines them in some kind of Mexican stand-off, like in one of those old Western movies Archie’s dad always liked to watch.

“ _ I’m _ the one who goes to all of his school conferences,” his dad says. He sounds angry. “ _ I’m _ the one who helps him with his homework.  _ I’m _ the one who takes him out on the weekends. You just pretend he doesn’t exist.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, we have a four-year-old daughter who I take care of  _ full-time _ -”

“So that makes it okay that you completely ignore our other kid?”

“Don’t turn this around on me. I am not the one who fucked up and got  _ arrested _ .”

His dad doesn’t respond and the footsteps stop. There’s no sound except for the quiet of the night. Jughead’s forgotten what he came down here for. He’s about to try and sneak back upstairs when his mom speaks again, her voice quiet now, not as harsh.

“FP...it’s so much money. What are we going to do?”

“...I don’t know yet. But I’ll figure it out. I’m gonna fix this.”

Jughead doesn’t want to listen anymore. He turns to creep back up the stairs, but he forgets about the creak on the bottom step. It’s loud, and his parents stop talking abruptly. Shit. Not wanting to get caught down here, he quickly scales the last few steps two at a time, scurrying back into his room and diving under the covers, listening as a pair of footsteps follow his path up the stairs.

He’s still debating whether he should pretend to be asleep when the door cracks open and his dad sticks his head inside. FP lingers in the doorway for a moment, before closing the door behind him and coming over to Jughead’s bed, sitting on the edge of it. He’s not looking at Jughead, but straight ahead at Jughead’s bookcase on the other side of the room. Jughead blinks at him.

After a long silence, FP lets out a long exhalation and turns to him. “I’m sorry, Jughead.”

Jughead doesn’t say anything, doesn’t have anything  _ to _ say. He thinks about what his parents were saying in the kitchen, about ignoring him, about pretending he doesn’t exist. He thinks about how his mom doesn’t look at him when she picks him up from school, the way she hardly talks to him at dinner. He thinks about how tired his dad is every night, how sad he seems all the time. He thinks about how his dad is looking at him right now, like he’s solid, like he’s real, like he’s worth looking at. He says the only thing he  _ can  _ say.

“That’s okay, Dad. It was an accident, right?”

FP breathes heavily again, the way Jughead does with Archie after they hold their breath going through the tunnel on the highway. He’s nodding, and his eyes are red. Jughead thinks he might be crying. He’s never seen his dad cry before. It makes him want to start crying.

“Yeah,” FP is saying. “Yeah, it was an accident, Jughead. But it was also my fault. I just don’t want you to think I’d forget about you, okay kid? I was thinking about you the whole time. The whole damn time.”

“I know, Dad,” Jughead says quietly.

FP hunches over, head in his hands. Jughead doesn’t know what to do except watch.

“Dad? Did you go to jail?”

His dad sighs again and sits up, turning to face Jughead.

“Yeah, I did. I was doing something bad, something I shouldn’t have been doing, and I got caught. It’s good that you called Archie’s dad. He came and helped get me out. You’re a smart kid, Jug. A real smart kid.”

He puts his hand on Jughead’s shoulder. And then Jughead is sitting up and throwing himself forwards, arms latching around his dad and holding on.

“I love you, Dad,” Jughead mumbles into his chest. And FP wraps his arms around him, one hand on the back of Jughead’s head, holding him close.

“I love you too, kid.”

  
  


**iv.**

_ I personify the ‘adolescent on a phone’, _ _  
_ _ Speaking like I’m bigger than my body. _

\- This Must Be My Dream, The 1975

Jughead lies awake at night, thinking about his life and how it came to be in a manner far too frank for someone so young. He is ten years old, and he doesn’t think he wants to turn eleven.

There was, of course, a time not so long ago when Jughead looked forward to his birthday, but more recently those times have been few and far between, and it’s getting hard to remember a time when his birthday wasn’t a complete dumpster-fire of utter misery.

On his eighth birthday, his dad was working, and his mom straight-up forgot. She sent him off to school in the morning with a sad, soggy bologna sandwich and the same kind of love and affection she usually showed him - that is to say, not much. Archie had remembered, at least, and he’d given Jughead a tight hug as a gift and offered to trade sandwiches at lunch. When Jughead got home that afternoon, his mom still hadn’t remembered, so he’d retreated to his room for the rest of the night. His dad didn’t get home until half past eight, at which point he’d come upstairs and into Jughead’s room with a big chocolate muffin lit by a single candle. Jughead had blown it out and then burst into tears, to his dad’s dismay. Jughead had told him about his terrible day, and his dad had patted him on the back. Later that night, he’d heard his parents arguing downstairs.

On his ninth birthday his Gram and Gramps had come down to visit from Toledo. His mom had cooked a pot roast and they’d sat around the table, all together, one big family, and then his Gramps had started ragging on his dad about something Jughead didn’t really understand, something to do with money and work, and his dad had sighed and looked unhappy, and his mom had stared at him with this nasty look on her face, and it was so bad that Jughead felt awful when it came time to blow out his candles, wishing it wasn’t his birthday after all. At least he’d got to sit next to Jellybean at dinner.

The night before his tenth birthday, his parents got into a fight. A big one, worse than any fight they’d ever had before. One of them had thrown the framed family picture that was on the sideboard in the kitchen and it had left a dent in the wall. It made Jellybean cry. But then the next day, they had a party - just like nothing had happened, like everything was still fine and the family picture wasn’t shattered - even though his parents weren’t actually speaking, and Jughead didn’t really want a party and his parents knew that, so they had just invited all their friends. Lately these friends had been cropping up more and more, especially after that night when FP had left Jughead in the car. Jughead didn’t like them. His dad’s friends were mostly big and muscly, with thick necks and red faces and tattoos running up and down their arms. His mom’s friends were all sad-looking in a way that Jughead couldn’t really explain, their eye make-up usually smudged and their hair limp or greasy, their clothes only ever in dark colours. And they all had these leather jackets, black with a big green snake on the back of them. Jughead wondered if his parents had those jackets too, but he’d never asked.

Whenever these friends showed up, Jughead avoided them as much as possible. They reminded him of the bikers he’d seen outside the Whyte Whyrm. If he could, he left the house, went to Archie’s instead. And if he couldn’t, he stayed in his room until he was absolutely positive they were gone, which could be several hours at a time, could be a whole night.

The party concept was simple: FP had fired up the barbeque in the backyard and everybody would mingle. There were a couple of kids his age, but he didn’t know any of them and they all seemed to know each other, and he knew that kids had the tendency to be mean, so he was too shy to talk to any of them. He spent most of his time in the kitchen, knowing he’d get in trouble if he tried to retreat any further but not wanting to throw himself into the deep-end that was his backyard, with the big, scary serpents and the kids with their whispers and giggles and the animosity between his parents growing bigger and bigger with every second that passed by.

A few people came in and out of the kitchen, grabbing drinks from the fridge or going to use the bathroom. None of them paid any attention to Jughead, though, for which he was grateful. He had really just wanted to read his new comics in peace, so he could tell Archie about them later. But then a voice said  _ hey _ and Jughead started and glanced up, eyes landing on a scrawny kid about his own age with big, round eyes and greasy black hair, standing in front of him with a can of 7-Up in his hand.

“Is that the new X-Men?” the kid asked.

“Uh, yeah…” Jughead managed to choke out. For a second he was worried that the kid would try to take it off him, but then his face broke out into a grin, big and friendly, and it was almost enough to make all of Jughead’s tension fade away. Almost.

“Sick! Can I see? I have to get all of mine second-hand,” the kid told him, and in his shock Jughead had shuffled over so the kid could read over his shoulder.

“I’m Lathyrus, by the way,” the kid said, and Jughead felt so bad that he felt inclined to tell him his own real name. He couldn’t do it, though.

“Jughead.”

“Oh, so this is your party then?” Lathyrus said, making Jughead cringe.

“I guess so.”

“Hey, better than my party last year. It was just me and my mom and my aunts. We had to do crochet.”

“Really?” Jughead said, making a face.

“Yep.”

They had kept reading the comic until Lathyrus’ mom had come looking for him.

“Lathyrus, sweet pea, where are you?” she had called out as she entered the kitchen, spotting the two of them. “There you are. Come back outside now, okay?”

So Lathyrus had thanked him for the comic and followed his mom outside, and then five minutes later FP had come inside looking for him, and he’d dragged Jughead outside so that they could have cake and sing “Happy Birthday”, and they all did, all looking at Jughead, which he hated, and Lathyrus was looking at him all sympathetically from where he stood with all of his friends, which he also hated, so after he blew the candles out he threw caution to the wind and snuck upstairs to his room, where he’d remained for the rest of the night, because nobody had bothered to come and look for him.

And so this year, about two weeks out from his birthday, Jughead decides that he doesn’t want to celebrate at all. He doesn’t tell anybody this until a week later, because nobody asks. At least, nobody asks until Archie does, because Archie’s always the first to ask Jughead about anything. Jughead doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“So this time next week it’ll be your birthday,” Archie points out as they climb the tree at the edge of the school yard.

“I guess so.”

Archie leans over the tree branch he’s scaling so that he can look down at Jughead below him. “You guess so? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really want to have a birthday this year,” Jughead shrugs, avoiding Archie’s eyes.

“What?! That’s crazy!” Archie exclaims. Jughead gets it. Archie’s birthdays are the best, and that’s from  _ his  _ perspective (because Archie usually gets to invite Jughead over on his birthday). His dad makes him a big, fancy breakfast, with eggs and bacon and waffles and french toast, and then they spend the day doing something awesome, like go-karting or bowling or laser tag, and then they go home and watch a movie and have a sleep-over. Jughead doesn’t have birthdays like that.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jughead says. Archie stares at him for a moment, as if trying to find the answers on Jughead’s face, but then he gives up and shrugs.

“Okay then,” he says, and he continues to make his way up the tree.

Two days before his birthday, when they’re all having dinner at the table, his dad asks the same thing. “So it’s your birthday in a couple of days, Jug. Anything you want to do to celebrate?”

“No,” Jughead says quietly in response.

His mom puts her fork down and looks up at him. It clangs noisily against the edge of her plate. “No? What do you mean, no?”

Jughead pushes his food around on his plate, not looking at either of them. “I don’t want to do anything.”

“Are you sure, kid?” FP asks, trying to catch his eye.

“Yes.”

“Well, fine. That means no presents,” his mom says.  _ Good _ , Jughead wants to say in response, but he doesn’t, just lets the conversation die.

Archie doesn’t let it go so easily. The day before, he brings it up again.

“C’mon, Jug, we have to do something. It’s your  _ birthday _ !”

“I already told you, I don’t want to.”

Archie pauses, his face scrunching up, maybe in annoyance, maybe because he’s coming up with an idea. “If you won’t do it for you, will you do it for me?”

Jughead makes a face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Yeah it does! Birthdays aren’t just for the person who’s birthday it is, they’re also for the people who want to celebrate that person. And I want to celebrate you.”

Jughead contemplates this idea, along with the look on Archie’s face, so earnest, so hopeful. Could he do it for Archie? Of course he could. He could do anything for Archie.

“Fine. But nothing big. And only with you.”

“Cool!” Archie says, and doesn’t say anything else about it for the rest of the day.

Jughead wakes up the next morning and he’s eleven. He gets dressed for school and makes his way downstairs. His mom is nowhere to be seen, but his dad’s made pancakes, a rarity in the Jones household. Without saying a word, FP gives Jughead a plate stacked high with them, pats him on the head, and goes. 

At school, Archie meets him with a grin. “My dad and I will come to your house to pick you up at about five, okay?” he says, elaborating no further. Jughead agrees. No one at school wishes him a happy birthday. Jughead is glad.

When he gets home that afternoon he hears his mom watching TV in the living room and decides to avoid her. Jellybean is playing in her room, but she comes out when she hears him on the stairs. “Happy birthday, Juggy!” she says, hugging him. She presents him with a picture she’d drawn, a crude depiction of the two of them side-by-side. Jughead loves it. It’s the best present he’s ever gotten. She smiles when he tells her so.

At five o’clock exactly, a horn honks outside and Jughead races down the stairs, not bothering to say goodbye to his parents, wherever they may be. Fred must know that it’s Jughead’s birthday if he’s letting Archie out on a school night, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He drives them to the Bijou and lets them out, telling them he’ll be back later. 

They’re showing a Hitchcock double-feature;  _ Psycho _ and  _ Rear Window _ . Jughead’s surprised that Archie listens to him enough to know that’s what he might like, then realises that surprise is stupid. Of course Archie listens, when does he not?

“I’ve never seen a black-and-white movie before,” Archie tells them as they walk to their seats. The theater is mostly empty, only an old couple sitting near the front and two teenage girls sitting off to the side. Jughead and Archie sit right at the back, legs up on the seats in front of them and popcorn in between them.

Archie shudders a bit at the shower scene, but laughs at the staircase murder. Then the ending happens, the final twist, Vera Miles screaming and Anthony Perkins with that terrifying look on his face, and Archie jumps and grabs his hand, squeezing it tight. He doesn’t let go, even when the credits roll.

Mid-way through  _ Rear Window _ , he leans his head on Jughead’s shoulder, and doesn’t move until the final ten minutes, where he’s too excited to stay still. They only stop holding hands when the lights go up at the very end, and they head back outside to where Fred’s waiting to take them to burgers at Pop’s, finding, to Jughead’s surprise, that his dad is sitting in the front seat next to him.

They get the best booth at Pop’s, the one in the back next to the window, and FP lets Jughead order and ice-cream sundae for dessert, and everybody is smiling and having a good time, so when Archie leans over and whispers in his ear,  _ happy birthday, Jug _ , Jughead doesn’t even mind, just smiles at him and thinks that maybe this was his best not-birthday ever.

  
  


**v.**

_ Like a lighthouse during a nor’easter, theirs was a love filled with static. Easy to falsify. _

\- Armadillo, Hala Alyan

Jughead stands next to the kitchen doorway, back pressed against the wall, listening as his parents’ voices reach cataclysmic volumes, unable to tell if the window panes are shaking because of the storm outside or because of them. He is twelve years old, and it feels like the earth is shifting beneath his feet.

His parents have been yelling for at least sixteen minutes straight, because that’s when Jughead had come downstairs to see if there was anything to eat in the refrigerator. Jellybean is still upstairs. He wonders if she can hear them, wonders if they’re louder than the storm.

“What are we supposed to do now?! Huh?! You idiot!” his mom yells, and has been yelling on repeat for what feels like eternity.

“Oh, I don’t know, Gladys. Maybe you could find a job for once instead of relying on me to do everything for you.”

“You know how fucking hard it is to find a job with no high school diploma in a po-dunk town like this?!”

“Okay, so now it’s my fault you  _ flunked out of high school _ ?”

“No, it’s just your fault that we live in this stupid town in the first place!”

His father laughs then, but it’s not a normal laugh. It’s a  _ mean  _ laugh. The same kind of laugh he gives Jughead when he asks if FP will take him to the comic book store on the nights he comes home late.

“Yeah, because Ohio is  _ so great _ .”

“It’s a hell of a lot better than here!”

There’s a silence, but it’s so loud that it hurts Jughead’s ears. The storm is lost in its wake. When his mother speaks again, she’s no longer shouting, but the words are so vicious, so poisonous, that he wishes she had been.

“I don’t get it, FP. How bad do you have to  _ fuck up _ for your  _ best friend _ to fire you?”

Jughead decides that he’s heard enough, that nothing in the fridge could possibly be worth enduring the way his parents loathing fills the air in the kitchen right now. He pushes off from the wall and creeps as quietly as he can up the stairs, head pounding, hands shaking. He finds Jellybean on the landing, fist gripping the bannister. She heard them.

He picks her up and takes her back to her room. They sit under her bed covers with a torch in between them, and Jughead reads to her from some old picture book. They ignore the storm.

Later that night, when his dad is gone and his mom is drinking wine in the living room and Jellybean is asleep, Jughead thinks about when his parents were  _ nice _ . When they used to sneak into the drive-in, or have picnics on the banks of Sweetwater River. When his mom would smile and his dad would watch her with a glint in his eye. He imagines that his life is just  _ Invasion of the Body Snatchers _ , that these people, whoever they are, are not his parents, not really. Then he thinks his life must be pretty messed up if he wishes he were living a horror movie instead of the real thing, so he rolls over and tries to sleep.

If Archie knows anything about FP being fired from Andrews Construction, he doesn’t mention it. Jughead thinks about saying something. For the past week, his dad has been mumbling about Fred Andrews, stuff about  _ loyalty _ and  _ trust _ and  _ backstabbing _ . FP talks about Fred like he sucks, which Jughead thinks is weird because FP’s never had a problem with Archie’s dad before. Besides, Jughead thinks Fred is super cool, because he plays catch with Archie and Jughead after school sometimes and takes them to the movies on Saturday afternoons. So he doesn’t say anything to Archie.

Betty walks with them on the way home from school, because her mom’s out of town and her dad thinks it’s good for her to be allowed out by herself sometimes. Betty’s not so bad these days. She likes the same books as him and knows heaps about cars, way more than any other girl in their class. But Jughead can tell that she likes Archie a lot better than him. Cheryl Blossom whispered to him in Geography the other week that Betty has a crush on Archie, and Jughead supposes that he really already knew that, but he doesn’t really mind because Archie doesn’t seem to notice or care. And anyway, he doesn’t really think that Betty is Archie’s ‘type’.

He says goodbye to the two of them as he turns on to Magnolia Crescent while they continue on Elm. It’s cold out, and Jughead can see his breath in clouds before his face. He jumps over cracks in the pavement, his made-up hopscotch paving the way home.

As Jughead walks up the path to his front door, he sees that his mom’s blue station wagon is missing from the driveway, which is weird because she likes to be home on Thursday afternoons to watch some one of those court-room procedurals on cable. But he shrugs it off, because she’s missed it once or twice before - although missing it put her in a really bad mood, so she probably wouldn’t be very pleasant company that evening. Then again, she was rarely pleasant company in the evenings these days.

Jughead lets himself in and calls out, just in case someone is home. No response. Whatever, means Jughead can take whatever he likes from the pantry and no one can stop him. In the end, there’s not much that’s worth stealing, but he manages to pilfer some crackers and a handful of chocolate cereal and takes his pickings up to his room, closing the door behind him. He thinks about calling Archie on the phone, but then he remembers that Archie is meant to be doing guitar practise right now, and also if he calls the Andrews house there’s a chance that Fred might answer the phone, and Jughead isn’t really sure what he’d say to Fred right now with everything going on. So he decides to start reading the book he borrowed from the library earlier that day, one that Betty had told him was good.

Hours pass and Jughead feels his concentration start to wane. It’s dark out by now, and a glance at the clock reveals it’s past eight o’clock. It’s not unusual for FP to be out all night sometimes, but Jughead’s never known his mom to be gone for so long without telling him, or at least leaving a note. Maybe she had left a note, and he’d missed it? He goes back to the kitchen and looks around, but there’s nothing on the counter, nothing tacked to the fridge, nothing at all. 

Without conscious effort, Jughead finds himself walking back upstairs towards his parent’s bedroom. He lingers in the doorway for a reason he can’t quite discern. The bed is made, the curtains still open. The room is empty. It feels empty. There’s a creeping feeling at the back of Jughead’s neck, and his mouth feels dry, his eyes heavy, and he still isn’t really sure if he’s figured it out yet.

He walks three steps, one, two, three, and stands in front of the dresser, hand lingering on one of the knobs. He’s scared to look, maybe more scared than he was when he and Archie watched  _ The Conjuring _ a month ago

(because Archie had leaned into his shoulder to hide his face and clutched Jughead’s hand tightly, and Jughead had thought he could probably face an evil demon witch any day of the week as long as Archie was standing next to him holding his hand)

but he knows Archie can’t save him now, he knows that he has to do this by himself, because he knows, he  _ knows _ , deep in his heart, what he’ll find when he opens the drawer. The same thing he found in the kitchen downstairs. Nothing at all.

The drawer is empty. All of his mom’s clothes, gone. His dad’s side of the dresser is still full, but it’s of little relief to Jughead. His mom’s jewellery box is also gone. When he checks the bathroom, he finds her toothbrush is gone. So is Jellybean’s. And that’s when Jughead starts to cry. He walks quickly across the landing and throws open the door to Jellybean’s room, sees her bed made up with blue plaid sheets, same as his because she wanted to match, only her posters are gone and her drawers are empty too and his mom is gone and she took Jellybean but she left him behind, she didn’t ask if he wanted to come too, she didn’t even bother to leave a note, and Jughead thinks that he might hate her, and he might hate his dad too, and he might hate this empty house with its empty drawers and empty promises. So he goes. He goes back downstairs and out the front door and down the street, and he doesn’t look back.

He goes to Pickens Park, where he sits on the swing set and cries until he can’t anymore, which is really only ten minutes, and then he sits there sniffling and feeling miserable. It’s cold out, and he’s shivering, but he finds he doesn’t care very much, and he wonders if he’d care even if he froze to death. Probably not.

He wonders if his dad knows that his mom’s gone yet. Wonders if his dad got a heads up or if he, like Jughead, had been simply left in the dust. For a moment, Jughead lets himself think that maybe this will bring him closer to his father. But he’s not a fool, and he knows fairly well how the world works, and he knows that this, after everything, will just make his dad worse.

“Jughead?”

Jughead looks up from his pity party to see Archie, all bundled up, Vegas by his side, tail wagging. Jughead must not look so good, because on seeing his face, Archie - who was already, it seemed, pretty concerned - steps hurriedly towards him, tugging Vegas behind.

“Jug, what happened? What are you doing here?”

“I-” He chokes on the words, and he feels like he should be crying again, but the tears don’t come, and he can’t get rid of the terrible feeling that’s building in his throat.

Archie crouches down and peers up at him, eyebrows furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned downward. Looking at him, Jughead is struck with the rather ridiculous thought - all things considered - that he would like nothing more than to see Archie smile instead. He almost considers cracking a joke, trying to make him laugh, except nothing really seems funny to him right now and he imagines Archie probably feels the same, even if Jughead can’t tell him why just yet.

Archie nudges Jughead with the hand he has resting on his knee.  _ How long has that been there? _

“C’mon. Let’s go back to my house,” Archie says gently, and he stands up. Jughead doesn’t move, doesn’t know if he  _ can _ move, until Archie holds out a hand to him, like a beacon in the cold, cold night.  _ Come here, come closer _ .

Late last year, when Jughead’s mom had taken them to the mall for the afternoon, she had watched the two of them walking side-by-side, hand-in-hand, and told them to stop.  _ You’re too old for this stuff now _ , she had said.  _ You don’t want people to think you’re queer, do you? _

Jughead doesn’t care anymore. He takes Archie’s hand.

They walk next to each other in silence, although Jughead can feel the way Archie keeps glancing at him anxiously, can practically hear the thoughts bouncing around in his stupid, caring, orange head. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and casts his eyes down to the sidewalk.

He makes sure he steps on every crack he can see.

The Andrews house looms, warm and inviting, lights left on for Archie and Vegas, and for a second Jughead forgets about his own house, with its cold and empty rooms. But only for a second. He follows Archie into the front hall, and the front door has barely closed when a voice calls out from the kitchen. The lump in Jughead’s throat is back.

“Arch? What took you so-”

Fred comes in from the kitchen, but stops when his eyes land on Jughead. Like Archie, concern fills his face the moment he sees him. God, he really must look terrible. 

“Hey, Jughead,” Fred says. “What’s going on?”

And Jughead had thought that he’d run out of tears, truly, but apparently he was wrong because here he is, standing in the Andrews’ front hall with Archie next to him, and Fred is looking at him like  _ that _ , like he truly sees him, like he truly  _ cares _ , and it’s so much more than anything Jughead’s received in as long as he can remember, so much more than the fleeting glances of annoyance his parents would throw him every now-and-then,  _ Jughead’s fucked up again _ , and he can’t handle it. So he’s crying again, and Archie’s frozen to the spot, looking at him with alarm, but it doesn’t matter because Fred is right there, his hand on Jughead’s shoulder, telling him  _ it’s okay, son _ (which, of course, only makes him cry harder).

Fred manages to usher him into the living room and onto the couch, sitting in the armchair opposite. Archie sits next to Jughead, so close their legs are pressed together, and he’s holding Jughead’s hand  _ again _ , and Jughead isn’t really sure if he’s doing it for him or for himself, but he finds that he doesn’t really care. Then, as abruptly as he started, Jughead stops crying.

They sit in silence for a minute or two. Archie is looking at their hands intertwined, but Fred is looking at Jughead, right into his face, and he won’t look away for anything. Jughead isn’t really looking at anything, too caught up in the thoughts circling round his head at breakneck speed.

“She’s gone,” he says quietly. And he knows she is, he’s known it for an hour now, maybe more, but saying it feels like he’s speaking it into existence. Saying it makes it real.

Archie has looked up from their hands and is looking at his face, and Jughead wonders if the heartbreak on Archie’s face is even half of his own.

Maybe if Fred were a cruel man, a different man, he would have pushed Jughead to say more, forced him to spell it out. But Fred Andrews could never be cruel, could hardly be anything but kind, and Jughead knew that, no matter what his dad said. So Fred fills in the blanks.

“Your mom?” he asks gently.

“Yeah.”

Mary makes up a mattress for Jughead on the floor of Archie’s room while Fred goes out to look for FP. She makes them hot chocolate and then, mercifully, leaves them be. He and Archie sit next to each other on Archie’s bed, silent once more. Jughead doesn’t mind the silence. He thinks, maybe, just being near Archie is enough. He hopes that it will always be enough.

They finish their drinks and Archie lets Jughead have both of his marshmallows, and then they get into their beds and lie next to each other in the dark. Jughead can’t sleep, doesn’t even know if it’s worth trying, so he listens to Archie’s breathing instead. It doesn’t sound like Archie’s sleeping either. He wonders how long they lay there, listening to each other not sleeping, before Archie speaks.

“Hey, Jug,” he whispers into the quiet of the night. “Do you want to come up here?”

Jughead lets the question linger in the air for a moment, then he gets up from the floor and steps over to Archie’s bed and gets in. They lie there for a few minutes more, face to face, hands tangled between them, before falling asleep one after the other.

A month later, a postcard arrives,  _ “Greetings from Toledo!” _ , and Jughead clocks his mom’s loopy scrawl on the back. He doesn’t bother to read it.

He throws it in the trash.

  
  


**vi.**

_ I'll make you happy, baby, just wait and see _ _  
_ _ For every kiss you give me, I'll give you three  _ _  
_ _ Oh, since the day I saw you _ _  
_ _ I have been waiting for you  _ _  
_ _ You know I will adore you 'til eternity _ _  
_ _ So won't you, please _ __  
_ (Be my, be my baby) _ _  
_ __ Be my little baby

\- Be My Baby, The Ronettes

Archie and Jughead race over cracked pavement towards their overturned bikes as soon as the bell rings, papers flying from their unzipped backpacks and pockets filled with all the money they have. They are fourteen years old, and it’s their last day of middle school.

The summer stretches out before them, expansive, limitless, everlasting. They can do anything, be anything. It’s only a matter of what they decide to do first.

So, of course, they go to the 7-Eleven on the corner of Sweetwater and Main, buy as much pick-n-mix as they can afford, and drag their bikes down to the banks of the river, where they share candy and skim stones. Jughead’s teeth are melded together with some particularly strong toffee, and Archie is smiling, a big, unguarded grin that takes up his whole face and at least half of Jughead’s heart.

“So what are we going to do this summer?” Archie asks him, his smile striking Jughead with full force, like a billion sun rays hitting his face all at once.

“Whatever we fucking want!” Jughead crows, because there’s something about this moment by the river, the heat of the afternoon warming him to his toes and Archie looking at him  _ like that _ that makes him feel full.

When it feels like they’ve thrown every single stone back into the river, they cycle back to Archie’s house. Up in his bedroom, Archie takes out his guitar and plays a solid rendition of “Hit the Road Jack”, then shows Jughead the comics he picked out last weekend. Jughead can’t remember smiling so much in his life. They get takeaway pizza and eat it on the couch while watching some old, cheesy horror movie, and Archie hides his face in Jughead’s shoulder even though it’s not really scary, and then they lope up to bed and Archie falls asleep while helping make up Jughead’s air mattress, and after only a second’s thought Jughead flops down next to him, Archie’s bed left abandoned for the night. As the haze of sleep clouds his mind, Jughead lets himself think, as he does at the end of so many days spent with Archie, that maybe today was the best day ever.

They plan to go to the Sweetwater Swimming Hole, and Jughead suggests they invite Betty, just to be nice, just because he can. Betty and Archie are pretty close these days, and he knows that Archie tells Betty that she’s his best friend too. He’d pretend it didn’t bother him if he had to, but he doesn’t have to, because a few months earlier Archie had told him that even though he says Betty’s his best friend, it’s not really the same as it is with Jughead. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Jughead - hell, it probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Archie - but he thinks he understood the sentiment behind it anyway.

So Archie invites Betty and she says yes, so the three of them ride their bikes down to the Swimming Hole and spend the day shooting the shit and messing around. As it happens, Betty is cooler than Jughead’s ever seen her. She has a new swimsuit, one with little strawberries on it, and big, oversized sunglasses, and she stretches out on a towel on the bank of the swimming hole, long, milky legs sticking out in the sun, looking a bit like one of those girls on the cover of  _ Sports Illustrated _ . But other than that, she’s mostly the same. She laughs at their jokes and tells them about the summer program she’s doing with her mom at the newspaper, and isn’t afraid to join in when they turn to play-fighting, even managing to score a few ruthless ducks on Archie before he resorts to tickling her, only stopping when Jughead jumps on his back and he’s forced to focus on him. They manage to get water all over Betty’s bag, so her clothes are soaking wet by the time they’re done, but she shrugs it off as best she can, and tells them that, at this rate, nothing could spoil this day for her. And if Archie holds on a little too long when he and Jughead wrestle, Jughead doesn’t say anything.

When Jughead gets home that evening, he finds his dad sitting on the bottom steps of the staircase, leaning against the wall, empty bottle of beer still clutched in his hand.

“Hey, Jug,” he says, words slurred. “Where’ve you been?”

Jughead stands on the front door’s threshold, heat of the summer air curling the hair at the back of his neck. He’s trying to remember the last time this house  _ didn’t _ feel empty. He steps inside and closes the door behind him.

“I was swimming with Betty and Archie.”

FP smiles, and Jughead knows he means it, but his face looks tired, like a man who has weathered far too much in a lifetime so short. “D’you have fun?”

“Yeah, I did,” Jughead says quietly. “C’mon, Dad, let’s get you to bed.”

FP lets Jughead cajole him up the stairs and into the bedroom, where he flops onto the bed, shoes still on, empty bottle still clutched in his hand. Jughead takes it from him and sets it on the nightstand, before going to the hallway closet to retrieve a blanket. As he throws it over FP, he speaks again, a quiet mumble.

“Sometimes I look at you, boy, and it’s like looking at a ghost of myself.”

Jughead stands still, lets his dad’s words wash over him.

“You say you were with the Cooper girl? She cute?”

Jughead has to think about it. He thinks about those little strawberries, her legs in the sun, how gold her hair looked when it caught in the light.

“I guess so.”

“You’ve never been very interested in girls, have you?” 

Jughead freezes. Surely his dad doesn’t mean… 

“Well, that’ll change one day, trust me,” FP continues, oblivious to Jughead’s internal plight. “Then all you’ll ever be able to think about is girls. It’ll ruin your life.”

FP closes his eyes and it seems like he’s done talking, but still Jughead stands there, next to the bed, looking over him like he’s waiting for something to happen.

“Dad?” Jughead says, more nervously than he intends. FP opens one eye and looks at him. “Are you okay?”

The other eye opens too, and FP stares at him, long and hard, more emotions on his face than Jughead can possibly hope to decipher.

“Yeah, I’m okay, kid. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”

The days blend together as the summer passes by. Jughead spends most of them with Archie - there’s scarcely a twenty-four hour period in which they don’t see each other. They eat at Pop’s, go to the drive-in, ride around town on their bikes. They read comic books and hang out in Jughead’s treehouse, they rent B-movies from the video store and watch them in Archie’s living room with the curtains drawn, they walk Vegas to visit Archie’s dad at work and get dinner with him after.

For Jughead, these days with Archie are so wonderful, so warm and bright and simply  _ happy _ that Jughead can’t help but feel, inexplicably, like he’s on the precipice of something terrible, that for all the happiness Archie brings him, he also makes him so impossibly  _ sad _ , but then the happiness and the seeming-sadness mix together and making something new, something he can’t even begin to understand, and he feels it eat at him late at night, stifling him like the hot summer air.

They invite Betty to join them every now and then, but she only says yes sometimes, because she’s doing that summer program with her mom and also she’s apparently best friends with Kevin Keller now. And sometimes when they’re up in Archie’s room, Jughead hears Fred and Mary arguing downstairs, so similar to the way his own parents did not so long ago, and Archie says it’s nothing, that they always get over it soon enough, but Jughead is too cynical, too wounded to really believe that, so he holds it in his chest, like he’ll jinx it if he says it out loud.

So he watches his dad drink himself to sleep, and he listens to Fred and Mary argue downstairs, and Betty turns them down yet again, and it makes Jughead feel like something’s rotting, like the heat got turned up too fast and time is blending together and he’s losing himself, but then Archie’s there, with his smile and his guitar and the summer sun on his side, so Jughead lets himself get lost, tries not to think so hard for once in his life.

The months turn into weeks turn into days, until there’s only so many until summer’s over and high school starts. On one of these last few days, Jughead finds himself sitting, as he so often does, with Archie in a booth at Pop’s Chock’Lit Shoppe, eating french fries and drinking milkshakes, chocolate for him, strawberry for Archie, as always.

“One day,” Archie says, dipping fries into his milkshake, “when you or me have our license, we’ll go on a road trip.” He sounds so confident that Jughead feels he has no choice but to believe it.

“Yeah?” Jughead says, eyes flitting towards Archie. “And where will we go?”

“Everywhere,” Archie insists, eyes filled with wanderlust. “From Riverdale to San Francisco and all the way around.”

“And where do you suppose we’d find the time to do this epic road-trip?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Archie says, not letting Jughead bring him down. “You, me, end of the universe. Remember, Jug?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Jughead murmurs, mind casting back to starry nights and tangled legs.

“We can do it whenever, because we’ll be together forever.”

Jughead leaves a moment of silence. “Well, not forever, Archie,” he says quietly.

“Why not?” Archie asks, such a simple question, yet so complicated at the same time.

“I mean…we’ll be friends, yeah. But we have to grow up sometime. Get a job. Get married. Have kids, or whatever. Grown-up stuff.”

“Not us. I just want it to be you and me forever, Jug.”

“Don’t be silly, Arch,” Jughead says, his voice so quiet that it's hard to hear. “Why would you want that?”

“Because I love you,” Archie shrugs, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, like it doesn’t really matter at all.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not being stupid. This is just about the only thing I’m not stupid about. I love you, Jug. More than anything else in the world. And I don’t want to be with some stupid girl for the rest of my life. Just you and me,” Archie tells him, and there’s not even the slightest hint of any kind of embarrassment behind his words. Because Archie knows that Jughead already knows.

“Archie…you can’t say stuff like that,” Jughead says, and it feels like his insides are tearing up. He can feel blood pumping to his head, hear his heart pounding in his ears.

“Why not?” Archie looks just about ready to shout it from the rooftops.

“Boys…boys aren’t supposed to like other boys the way they like girls,” Jughead says, but he’s starting to wonder who came up with that idea in the first place.

“Says who?”

“Says my mom,” Jughead responds quietly, even though his mom is gone, and it doesn’t look like she’s coming back anytime soon.

The thing is, Jughead is pretty sure that Archie doesn’t fully grasp the weight of the words he’s saying, doesn’t really understand what they mean in the context of the lives they lead. They are so young, and this love is so raw, that neither of them know what to do with it.

Archie is staring at him, and Jughead is struck by an overwhelming feeling that, no matter how close he and Archie are, no matter how much they tell each other, no matter how many secrets they share, he may never, in his entire life, truly understand Archie. And suddenly Archie feels very far away, even though he hasn’t moved, and it feels like something in Jughead’s chest that has been simmering for many, many years has finally boiled over, scalding his insides and burning his soul, and he doesn’t understand this feeling, doesn’t know what it means, can’t bear it. Archie is still staring at him.

Jughead stands abruptly. “I- I have to go.”

And he does. He leaves Archie sitting in their usual booth and runs, all the while knowing that, given the chance, he would throw every single thing in his life away for Archie, a thought so terrifying that it threatens to open its jaws and swallow him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck it, i'm on tumblr: @ultraviolensces for main and @stxveharrington for the occasional riverdale shitpost.
> 
> anyway, emotions are confusing and i am projecting, so i feel like the internal workings of these characters (specifically in section vi) might be a bit convoluted??? i'd love to hear some alternative interpretations, bc i've re-read this so many times now that it sounds like pig latin to me tbh...so yeah.
> 
> ok but seriously this shit took me like forever and also i miss Human Contact so PLEASE leave a comment? pretty please? promise i don't bite! xo


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, adding another random cameo for my own pleasure even though i said jason blossom is irrelevant to this fic: all in a day's work (also yes that was meant to be sweet pea in the last chapter lol)
> 
> songs i listened to writing this (aka the Vibes for this chapter):  
> \- francis forever by mitski  
> \- affection by between friends
> 
> cw: gr*ndy's in this chapter, so content warning for statutory rape and csa (but, like, nothing that's not shown in the show)

**part ii:** **_schism_ **

“What do you see happening, long-term?”

**i.**

_Why do stars fall down from the sky_ _  
__Everytime you walk by?_ _  
__Just like me, they long to be_ _  
__Close to you_

\- (They Long to Be) Close To You, Carpenters

At the age of fourteen, Archie thinks that, although he might not know much about life or philosophy or the world around him, he knows a thing or two about love.

Love is laughing at someone else’s joke. Love is the taste of strawberries on a warm day. Love is Friday night dinners at Pop’s. Love is the flowers that bloom in his backyard in Spring. Love is a home-cooked meal. Love is his dad leaving the back door open after a storm. Love is his mom’s smile on a Sunday morning. Love is a burst of sunshine in the middle of January. Love is holding someone tight and not letting go.

And love, Archie knew, was him and Jughead.

Archie has loved Jughead for as long as he can remember. It is simple to him, like breathing air, because he doesn’t know what it’s like to live without loving Jughead, and all Archie wants is to be close to Jughead as often as he can be.

This feeling existed subconsciously for a number of years, because it needed no analysis. Archie never felt the need to question it, because nobody ever asked him to. So when he felt the need to touch Jughead, to take his hand, he did it, and when Jughead needed help, or asked him for something, he gave it, and when he wanted to tell Jughead exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling, out loud, he said it.

And Archie never really thought about the future all that much, didn’t feel the need to, but whenever he did it always went back to Jughead. It’s the only thing that Archie was certain about, the only thing that made sense to him.

There came a certain time, however, when Archie began to wonder if other people had these feelings too. He didn’t really know anyone like him and Jughead. He wondered what happens to best friends when they get old. He didn’t know any adults with best friends. So, he did what he usually did whenever he had a question that was unanswered. He asked his dad.

“Dad,” Archie had said one evening, while Fred was cooking dinner, “What happens to best friends when they get old?”

His dad had looked at him long and hard, eyebrows furrowed, before answering carefully. “Well, it depends. Sometimes people stay friends forever. They still go ‘round to each other’s houses or hang out at the movie theater on the weekends. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people just...grow apart. And you have to make new friends.”

“But why do people grow apart?” Archie had asked.

“It can be lots of different things. When people grow up they can get busy, you know, with their job or with their family, and then they don’t have time to hang out anymore. Or maybe they have to move away. Or maybe they don’t like the same things as you anymore. Or maybe they do something you don’t agree with. Stuff like that.”

Archie thought about it for a second, before shrugging. “Well, I think me and Jughead will be friends forever.”

“Yeah?” Fred had said, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yeah, ‘cause Jughead never does stuff that I disagree with. And I don’t care if we don’t like the same stuff, ‘cause I like _him_ , not his stuff. And if he moves away, I’ll just move with him. And if he gets a busy job, I’ll just get the same job. And _I’m_ his family anyway, so that doesn’t matter.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out, son.”

“Yep,” Archie said smartly, then hesitated for a second. “Did you have a best friend when you were a kid, Dad?”

Fred didn’t answer for a moment. “Yeah, I did, Arch.”

“Who was it?”

Another silence. “It was Jughead’s dad, actually.”

Archie was surprised. He had known that his dad and Jughead’s dad knew each other, since they worked together, and that was how he and Jughead had met in the first place, but he never knew that they had been _best friends_. They certainly didn’t seem it now.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So why aren’t you friends so much anymore?”

Fred paused. Considered it. “He does some things I don’t agree with.”

And Archie had thought about it, wondered what his dad meant. But then he’d been distracted by something else, the way that kids so often are, and he’d left his dad in the kitchen to go and do something else.

In the seventh grade, Cheryl Blossom started going out with Reggie Mantle. All in all, they only lasted two weeks, and Archie was pretty sure they’d never seen each other outside of school hours, but Betty had told him that Cheryl had said the two of them were in love and that one day they were going to get married.

It was the first time that Archie had really thought about marriage, properly. The idea hadn’t appealed to him. There’d never really been any girls that had caught Archie’s eye long enough for him to consider some brief, fantastical future, no girls he was interested in spending extended amounts of time with, no girl he’d longed to kiss, to love, to care for. The only girl he really loved - beside his mom - was Betty. But he didn’t love her like _that_ . No the only person Archie had really loved like _that_ was...well...

And so Archie, aged twelve, had sat up in his room and written out a list, which looked like this:

_Why I Love Jughead:_

  * He’s good at explaining things when I don’t understand them.
  * He doesn’t make me feel stupid when I don’t understand something.
  * He always answers the phone, even when it’s not a good time.
  * He doesn’t care that I’m bad at reading.
  * He’s funnier than anybody else I know.
  * He always listens when I play the guitar.
  * He has a nice smile.
  * He doesn’t smile at anyone as much as he smiles at me.
  * He is my best friend.



(He still has that list. Every now and then he remembers it, folded neatly at the bottom of his desk drawer, and he takes it out and reads it again, even though he has it perfectly memorised.)

A few months later, they’d been doing poetry in his English class, and everybody had written limericks for an assignment. Archie’s hadn’t been very good, just something stupid about a sheep exploding but in rhyme scheme, pretty much just a mad lib using the examples they’d been given as a template. Jughead’s was, of course, brilliant, something about following a crow home in a storm, which he’d told their teacher was an homage to “The Raven”, impressing her still further. But it had been Betty’s that had stuck out to him the most: instead of writing some comical spiel, she’d written a sweet little poem about love and blooming flowers. Archie didn’t know they were allowed to do that, so when he went home, he wrote a new poem, just for himself, and it went like this:

_The boy I love is like the sun,_ _  
__I know deep down that he’s the one._ _  
__My heart feels full when he is near,_ _  
__When he’s gone, to me it’s clear_ _  
__I’ll love him ‘til my days are done._

He thought about showing it to Jughead, but decided against it when he remembered that Jughead had made fun of Betty’s poem, said it was silly. Instead, he shows it to his dad, who reads it very seriously, maybe more than once considering how long it takes him. But then he smiles, and gives the poem back to Archie.

“This is really good, Arch. You’ve got a talent for this stuff,” Fred said, and Archie had beamed at him.

So Archie thinks he understands something about love, but he doesn’t understand the look Jughead is giving him across the booth at Pop’s, when all he’d done was say out loud what they’d both been thinking all along, what they’d both been thinking their whole lives.

And then Jughead is standing up and walking away, and it feels like Archie’s blinked and he’s disappeared, and he doesn’t understand where he went wrong, or what this means, or what he should do next.

He sits for a moment, not moving, not really thinking either, when suddenly he looks up and the sun is setting and he has to be home. So he gets up and he stumbles out of the diner, feeling like he’s walking on air. Thoughts race through his mind and his head hurts.

Because maybe he was wrong about love. Maybe Jughead didn’t feel it the same way he did after all. Maybe, despite everything, there was nothing special about him and Jughead. No cosmic connection, no forged fate. Just two ordinary boys who happened to be friends, destined, if anything, to go the way that so many had gone before them: to grow up, and to grow apart.

The weekend before school starts his mom says that she and his dad have something important to tell him at dinner. Archie doesn’t think much of it until they sit down at the table that evening. They’re having steak and potatoes. His parents aren’t looking at each other.

“Archie,” his mom begins, laying her hand on his arm. “You know your father and I love you very much.”

His eyes flit between the two of them. His mom’s face is open, earnest. His dad looks tired. “Yeah…” he replies.

His mom glances at his dad for the first time since they’ve sat down. She turns back to Archie. “Well, the thing is...we’ve decided that we aren’t going to live with each other any more.”

Archie realises at that moment that he’s been numb for days, not really registering anything anyone says to him, much less forming opinions about them. This news appropriately shocks him out of his reverie.

“What?” he says, blinking stupidly. “Why?”

“Oh,” Mary says, glancing at Fred again. “We just...oh honey, we just don’t really love each other anymore.”

“What?” Archie says disbelievingly, dropping his fork. It clangs on the edge of his plate, seeming disproportionately loud, especially considering the fact that his voice is also rising in volume. “That’s stupid. How do you just _stop_ loving someone?”

His mom looks upset, desperate to placate him. “Well, it’s not so simple-”

“So are you just going to stop loving me someday?”

“Archie, honey, of course not-”

“Really? Because you’ve apparently magically stopped loving Dad!”

A silence. That’s when his dad speaks for the first time, his voice calm and his gaze steady. “Archie. You have to understand that this is a difficult decision for me and your mother. And the last thing we want is for you to feel like you’re gonna get lost in this. You are the most important thing. For both of us. And all we want is to make this as easy for you as possible.”

Archie’s ears are ringing. Both of them are staring at him.

“I just-” He’s embarrassed to hear that his voice is trembling. “I just don’t understand.”

But he does. He’s heard them fighting over the summer, he’s seen the looks Jughead had given him, like he understood, like he sympathised. And he supposes, at the back of his mind, he might have seen this coming. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. 

Mary speaks again, her voice strained. “I’ve got a job offer. In Chicago. I’m moving up there in a couple of weeks, and I’d like you to come with me.”

Archie looks at her, a mix of a glare and something more questioning, something tragic. “Do I get a choice in all this?”

“Archie, of course you do. It’s like your dad said. We just want what’s best for you.”

And maybe that’s true. But Archie can’t help feeling that everything he thought he’d known about love is shattering before his very eyes, and he can’t help that some of the shards are getting lodged in his heart.

The next time Archie sees Jughead is on the first day of school. He spots him on the front steps and freezes, not knowing what to do with himself. They’ve never gone this long without speaking before. Before his fight or flight response can truly kick in, Jughead catches sight of him. He looks more displeased than Archie can remember, especially after this summer of smiles and laughter. But, it seems, at least, that his displeasure is more to do with the environment in general than Archie himself, since he makes his way across the lawn to Archie’s side.

“This is my own personal nightmare,” he says in lieu of greeting, and Archie lets out a choked laugh in response.

They have English together, and World History, but that’s it. They don’t sit next to each other in English, because there’s an alphabetical seating chart, meaning Archie has to sit in the front row while Jughead gets a seat next to Kevin Keller (not that Jughead looks so pleased about it) near the middle. And they come to World History from different classes, so when Jughead gets there Archie’s already sat down and the seats around him are already filled. Jughead’s still got that displeased look on his face from earlier. It makes Archie’s heart feel funny for reasons he can’t explain.

When he goes for lunch at the cafeteria, Jughead is nowhere to be seen, so Archie makes his way over to where Betty sits with Kevin and asks to join them, then spends the whole period listening to them talk about economic reform or something ridiculous like that, dividing his time between feeling stupid for having nothing to contribute and thinking about Jughead.

In Chemistry after lunch, he ends up sitting next to Reggie Mantle. Despite going to school with Reggie every year since kindergarten, Archie doesn’t really know him all that well. They used to play together during lunch sometimes back in elementary school, but Archie always had Jughead and Reggie always had...whoever he had. He also used to be mean to Jughead sometimes, calling him names, and Archie hadn’t liked that. But, it turns out, Reggie’s a pretty funny guy, and he’s spent the summer playing the same video game that he and Jughead had been working through before...well.

After school, Archie waits ten minutes for Jughead to appear. When he doesn’t, he walks home alone.

As the last of the summer heat fades away, Archie finds himself getting more and more used to the new normal. Jughead still doesn’t show up for lunch, so when Reggie offers for Archie to sit with him and Moose Mason, he accepts. His mom moves to Chicago and makes him promise he’ll visit over New Year. He’d thought it would be weirder than it is. His dad gets him helping with construction one afternoon a week. Archie loves it, truly, ‘cause it’s simple and he’s good at it and it makes his dad happy. When Jughead finally does show up for lunch, he sits alone at a table in the back corner. Archie thinks about ditching Reggie and Moose to sit with him, but he’s reading a book with his headphones in and looks like he’d rather not be disturbed. They still talk in their classes sometimes, but not like they used to. Archie hates it, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, how to fix it. There’s a new music teacher at Riverdale High. Archie’s seen her at the school assemblies. She’s young, pretty. He debates signing up for music lessons, but then he thinks about his guitar, sitting in the corner of his room, untouched since the summer. 

He signs up for football instead.

  
  


**ii.**

_It’s like when we walked home on different sides of the same street, and I crouched beneath a car to see if you’d notice, and you didn’t, but that doesn’t really tell us anything, does it, only that sometimes you pay more attention to the streetlamps than to me, and I do the same_

\- Step Four: Moral Inventory, Hala Alyan

For the record, it’s only been three days, four hours and twenty-six minutes and Jughead already hates high school.

It’s not for disappointment of expectation or anything, no. Jughead had a pretty good idea of what high school would be like before going in, and that idea included the fact that he wouldn’t like it, like, at all. However, it _hadn’t_ included the fact that things would be weird between him and Archie, which they are. It’s not just the fact that Archie looks at him like a deer caught in headlights every time they’re in the same room, it’s also that Jughead doesn’t really know what to say to him anymore. Which is stupid, because he’s never run out of things to tell Archie before.

It’s the main reason Jughead’s taken to skipping lunch. Hard as he tries, he can’t bear the idea of trying to make stilted, awkward conversation with Archie for an entire lunch period, so he’s taken to hiding in the school library during break. Honestly, he doesn’t really mind. It’s quiet in there, and he can read his book without being bothered (although it is annoying that he can only steal bites of his food covertly, whenever the librarian’s not looking). It’s hardly the worst part of his day.

It’s on the third day, during the fourth hour and twenty-seventh minute that Jughead gets his head flushed in a toilet.

At this point, he’s already endured a few nasty comments here and there, again, nothing he wasn’t expecting, nothing that plagues his mind for more than a second. But, try as he might, it’s really not that easy to brush off the humiliation that comes with emerging from a toilet bowl with sopping wet hair and a noseful of water. It’s not like he’s really worried, or anything - especially considering the red-headed footballer who’s dunked him in is far too scrawny to actually scare him - he’s just embarrassed, maybe a bit annoyed

So yeah. Jughead thinks it’s safe to say that high school sucks. 

And it’s not like home is all that much better. Most of the time the house stands cold, dark and empty, and Jughead is left to wander its rooms and wonder when everybody disappeared, when he got so lonely. On the few nights a week his dad _does_ come home, he’s drunk. He’s not a mean drunk - Jughead supposes he can be thankful for that, at least - but he is a useless drunk. Sad, self-pitying. Jughead doesn’t know if he hates it more when his dad is home or when the house is empty. He just knows he hates them both. Really, it feels like Jughead hates just about everything right now.

So here are how things stand with Archie at the moment: they don’t hang out outside of school anymore. They don’t talk in class. During lunch - if Jughead even bothers to show up - he sits alone while Archie sits with future-varsity-knuckleheads Reggie Mantle and Moose Mason. Their conversations are limited to locker discussions in between periods and brief exchanges on the occasion that the two walk home together.

Jughead’s never really had any friends besides Archie, and he’s never really wanted to. It’s a sentiment that has not changed now, although he finds himself increasingly feeling the weight of the loneliness that seems to follow him wherever he goes. He hasn’t really talked to anyone properly since summer. It’s whatever.

He keeps his head down, does his work, sits at home. He tries desperately to stifle any and every emotion that threatens to overwhelm him. He finally calls his mom back. It’s so clear that she’s only been calling to absolve herself of any guilt she may have had that Jughead wishes he hadn’t spoken to her after all. Some nights he helps his dad up to bed. Other nights, he leaves him on the stairs. 

It seems the toilet-dunking was limited to being some kind of newbie hazing thing, but that doesn’t mean that Jughead is free from whatever torment the upperclassmen see fit to unleash on him whenever they feel like it. He supposes it’s bullying, but it’s not like it’s deliberately repeated or anything. It’s mostly just some of the football players leering at him in the hallways and girls whispering and giggling as he walks by. He’s pretty sure none of them even know his name, though, so he doesn’t take it personally.

His days start to bleed together. It feels like he’s living his life on repeat, every day, every hour the exact same as the one before. Maybe that’s why he starts watching Archie’s football practices. Or maybe it’s something else.

He doesn’t really know _what_ he wants from Archie. A part of him longs to go back to the way they were, back to childhood, back to nights in the treehouse and Saturday afternoons at the movies, but he knows he’s just looking back at those times through the rosy-colored lens of nostalgia, knows that half of those nights and afternoons he was mostly focused on things at home, on his parents, on what the future might bring them. Another part of him wishes that Archie had the answers, that Archie would know what to do, that for once Jughead wouldn’t have to be the one to fix everything and that Archie would just tell him how things are and what they should do. He wishes that Archie would be his friend again, properly. He wishes that Archie would leave him alone, stop plaguing his thoughts well into the dark of the night while he’s trying to sleep.

(And there’s something else he longs for, something that he’s hidden so far inside himself that it scares him to even go near it, so he leaves it buried in the deepest cavity of his heart and dreads the day that he will be forced to uncover it, the day that feeling he’s tried so hard to stifle, to ignore, finally sees the light, finally meets its reckoning.)

He watches Archie from underneath the bleachers. He’s always been easy to spot, red hair standing out even in the dull light that signals the colder months are coming. He’s good, too - at football - even Jughead can tell. It makes something ache in his chest.

Jughead recalls a brief period when the two of them were eleven, going into middle school, when he had worried that, now that things were changing, Archie would realise his potential to be more than he had been. He supposes, bitterly, that’s what’s happening now. To Jughead, these high school ideals of ‘popularity’ seem so juvenile, so mindless, that he can barely contain his contempt for them. And yet, no matter how archaic the whole system seems to him, his classmates ensure that it is rigorously upheld, and Jughead is certain that soon the confines of the social hierarchy will prevent him and Archie from ever going back to the way they were. It’s just a shame that Archie’s fallen victim to it, like so many before him.

Because it’s not like Jughead’s _jealous_ of Archie’s popularity. Jughead can’t think of anything worse than being forced to socialise with a bunch of shallow, self-obsessed teenage narcissists. In fact, he doesn’t like socialising with anyone at all. No, Jughead knows that this time is fleeting, and he wants no part in it. He just wishes that Archie could see that too.

It’s late November when Betty finds him in the library during the lunch period. Until now, he’s avoided being found out by anyone who knows him well enough to consider instigating conversation with him. He supposes this was inevitable, though. Trying to keep Betty Cooper from the library was like trying to keep a dog from its bone. Sure enough, she spots him, even though he’s sitting in the back corner and trying to make himself invisible.

“Hi Jughead,” she greets him. “What are you doing in here?”

He knows it’s obvious. It’s the middle of the lunch period and he’s just taken a bite of his poorly-assembled sandwich - his mouth is still full. But he’s not just going to _say_ that, even if they both know it.

“Reading,” he says instead, holding up his book. It’s a battered copy of _Carrie_.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to read that. Is it any good?”

“As good as they say.”

A silence falls between them. Jughead can tell that there’s a lot that Betty wants to say to him, can see the internal battle raging behind her eyes.

“You know, if you wanted, you could sit with me and Kevin at lunch…” she says, eyes wide, consoling.

Jughead’s not really interested in being Betty’s latest pity project. He knows there may be a part of her, sweet Betty, that genuinely likes him and enjoys his company for whatever godforsaken reason, but it’s not a part of her that he’s willing to test. No, rather that Betty see him as a guy she can talk to in the hallway than be subjected to his constant misery business.

“That’s okay, Betty. I like it in here. It’s quiet.”

He can tell she wants to push it further, but instead she shoots him a small smile and nods, before turning and leaving him alone.

In the end, Jughead thinks, it’s for the best.

  
  


**iii.**

_Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud._

\- Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out, Richard Siken

For a good portion of the first semester, Archie had spent much of his time trying to figure out a way to get back to normal with Jughead. But being friends with Reggie and Moose now was starting to make him think that maybe there was no normal with him and Jughead. Maybe there never had been. And then he’d gotten busy, with assignments and football and helping his dad, and he’d just...forgotten.

Perhaps it was more wilful than simply forgetting. If Archie is speaking in terms of being mature, perhaps it’s an attempt to move on, to accept that that which will never will never happen. But Archie is not mature, and these things are hard to accept. So he’s at a crossroads. Because what good does clinging to the past do him? It affords him misery with no reward, and for what? The vain hope that one day he and Jughead will converge once more in perfect harmony, like an alignment of the stars, like fate? But what happiness can a life without Jughead bring him? And so, instead of pondering this paradox of human emotion, he does his best to not think about it at all. Lately, it’s been working pretty well for him.

He goes to visit his mom over New Year, as promised - although Reggie whines that he’ll be missing out on “the party of the year” at Chuck Clayton’s house. She has an apartment in the city, and Archie spends his days with her visiting various landmarks and not-talking about his dad. He has a pretty good time, and he’s missed her, but he doesn’t regret choosing his dad, not even for a second, and as a result he feels bad for not really feeling bad.

When he gets back home, he wishes he could talk about it with someone, and for once he can’t really go to his dad. For the most part, Archie likes hanging out with Reggie and Moose because it’s so uncomplicated, because they only talk about shallow stuff that Archie finds easy to relate to, but when it comes to this he’s not sure either of them will be able to give him whatever it is he’s looking for - even if they cared enough to try. And, well, obviously Jughead’s a no-go.

It’s seeming, more and more, that Jughead doesn’t really want to hang out with him anyway. On the limited occasion that they _do_ spend time together, there’s a weird kind of tension between them, hardly helped by the fact that Jughead always seems to be in a bad mood these days. For the life of him, Archie can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. The incident last summer is months behind them, and neither of them have brought it up once. Besides, Archie can hardly remember why it was such a big deal in the first place.

Come March, Archie finally decides to stop waiting the extra ten minutes after the final bell to see if Jughead will join him. That same afternoon, he spots Betty a few yards ahead while he’s walking home. He calls out to her, and jogs to match her pace.

“Hey, Betty. I didn’t know you were walking today,” he greets her, and she smiles at him.

“I’ve been walking every day, actually,” she says, in her soft-spoken way. “My dad finally convinced my mom that I’m old enough to walk a few blocks by myself. It’s not like we live in the Southside, after all.”

“I had no idea,” Archie says. “That’s crazy, we must have been just missing each other this whole time.”

She smiles extra hard at that, although Archie can’t tell why. “Yeah, I guess we have.”

They walk a few extra paces, side-by-side, when Betty speaks again. “I actually assumed you were still walking with Jughead.”

“Yeah...no, I haven’t been. Not regularly, anyway. I don’t know, he’s just been...weird. Ever since school started,” Archie tells her. It feels weird to say out loud, a bit like he’s speaking it into existence.

“Really?”

“I just- I don’t know what to do about it. It feels like he’s pulling away from me, and I don’t know why.”

“Oh, Arch,” Betty says sympathetically, reaching out to put her hand on his shoulder. “High school can be hard for people. I’m sure he’ll come around eventually.”

“You think so?” Archie asks, even though he knows Betty can’t promise him anything.

“I’m sure of it.”

So that’s how it starts - the thing with Betty. They’ve always been friends, sure, but over the last summer it sort of felt like Betty had pulled away, and Archie hadn’t been too bothered because she’d always come second to Jughead, anyway. But now that Jughead’s around so much less, there’s an easy vacancy in Archie’s life for some kind of deep-rooted connection, and so in the end Betty’s the one to fill it. 

It starts with them walking home from school, and then they go to Pop’s one night to do homework, only for Archie to get to talking about the stuff with his parents, speaking for so long that Betty breaks her curfew, and then they’re sitting together in class and hanging out on the weekends just for fun, and Betty comes to all his football games and Archie sits with her and Kevin at lunch as often as he does with Moose and Reggie. 

Betty tells him about her family, her strict mom and her shifty dad and her older sister with a flair for the dramatic. She’s candid about it in a way that Jughead never was about his family. Archie doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. She also tells him about her big future plans, living in the city, maybe writing, maybe researching. In turn, Archie talks about his family, about his plans - few though they are - but he can’t bring himself to talk any more about Jughead. Even if he tries, the words get lodged in his throat.

He does tell her about his now-abandoned interest in music, which she then tries to encourage him to revisit. She drags him to meet the new music teacher - Ms. Grundy, her name is, with her large-frame glasses and her prim, tailored clothing - but Archie claims he’s too busy with football, and Betty, thankfully, lets it go.

One day, nearing the end of the school year, Archie gets out of football practice late. As he’s walking home, he spots Jughead at the end of the next block. Without second thought, Archie calls out to him, jogging to catch up. At the beginning of the year, they’d still walked home together every now and then, maybe once a week. Since Archie had started walking with Betty, though, that number had stooped to zero. 

“Hey, Jug,” Archie says when he catches up, only slightly out of breath. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Jughead says, and doesn’t elaborate.

Archie doesn’t let it get to him. “So, hey, were you only just leaving school now?”

“Yeah.” Another one-word answer. Jughead’s hardly looking at him, either.

“You get kept behind, or...?”

“Was in the library.”

Archie can’t take it anymore. “What is your problem, man?”

As soon as he says it, he wishes he could take it back. Jughead, on the other hand, seems to revel in it, finally looks at him, a mean kind of look on his face.

“My _problem_ , Archie, is that you’ve changed. You’ve got all your new friends and your new life and you hardly even care about the person you used to be anymore,” Jughead says, an undercurrent of built-up tension flowing through his words. He’s been waiting to say this for a while.

“So what, I’m not allowed to grow up sometime? I can only be one person for my entire life?”

“You used to actually care about stuff, Archie. Like music. But then you just throw it all away so you can play football and hang out with all your monkey-brain, cool, _popular_ friends.”

Archie stops walking. Jughead does too. They face off in the middle of Maple Street. “Sorry that you’re not the only person in my life, Jughead,” Archie says. He didn’t even know he was angry about this stuff until he’s saying it. “Sorry that I’m not still that kid who followed you around blindly for _years_. Sorry that I’m moving on. But don’t tell me that you didn’t play a part in this.”

“How is this _my_ fault?” Jughead asks incredulously.

“You go around acting like everything is some special kind of hell designed specifically for you, but it’s not, okay? Things suck for everybody. You’re not the only person who’s allowed to have problems.”

In the entire time he’s known Jughead, Archie’s never spoken to him like this before. They were never the arguing type, the pair of them. The fact that, apparently, that’s changed tears at something in Archie’s chest.

“Oh, fuck off, Archie,” Jughead says, turning away.

“You can’t push me away and then blame me for not being there!” Archie calls after him.

Jughead turns, looks at him. “When did I ever push you away, Archie?”

Archie hesitates, tries to swallow the lump in his throat. “Don’t make me say it.”

(Maybe things once said aren’t so easily forgotten after all.)

Jughead stares at him for a moment and, try as he might, Archie can’t decipher the look in his eyes, but he knows, deep down, that Jughead’s never forgiven him for that afternoon at Pop’s, that even though they don’t talk about it, it exists in the space between them, feeding on their disaffection. And Archie wants to say it, wants to ask where he went wrong, wants to ask if he did too much, went too far, but before he can build up the courage Jughead has turned again and is walking away, Archie watching him go and making no move to follow.

He’s not sure how long he stands in the middle of the street, trying to silence the noise of his thoughts even though he knows that something has shifted, that his life from now on will never be the same, that whatever went wrong between him and Jughead at the end of last summer may have ruined them irreparably. When he finally gets his feet to move the sun is starting to set, and by the time he’s gotten home he’s managed to shove his thoughts about Jughead, about summer, about love to the back of his mind. The only thing he can do now is try to forget.

**iv.**

_I went to the riverbed to wait for you to show up._ _  
__You didn't show up._ _  
__I kept waiting._

\- I Had A Dream About You, Richard Siken

When summer comes around this year, Jughead thinks he might just be the most miserable he’s ever been in his life. He spends half of the first week in his bedroom. He hardly eats - which is how he knows it’s bad. He just lies on his bed and tries to think about nothing, with varying success. 

_Don’t make me say it._

The words echo in his head on repeat, a constant playlist of how things could have been, how they once were. _Don’t make me say it._

It’s harder to not-think at night, and so during the second half of the first week he takes to walking around the neighborhood streets after dark. The day’s heat lingers well after the sun’s gone down, stifling, inescapable. Whatever started rotting last summer has now entered late-stage decay, but this time around there’s no Archie to distract him, so it fogs his mind and dulls his senses and makes him feel like he’s always just a step away from the edge of a cliff, dark waters below waiting to swallow him whole.

Honestly, Jughead probably would have spent the entire summer following this routine - confined to his room by day, wandering the streets by night - if not for one small problem, which his dad only thought to fill him in on a few days before it was going to become a _big_ problem.

He supposes that, considering the fact that his dad hasn’t held a steady job since he lost the one at Andrews Construction three years earlier, the fact that he’s lost the house shouldn’t really come as a surprise. If anything, he’s surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner. Jughead’s not entirely sure what his dad’s been doing for money lately, but judging by the regular lack of food in the house and the fact that the power gets shut off sometimes for apparently no reason, he’s guessing it’s not very reliable.

And so, in the second week of summer vacation, Jughead helps his dad pack up the house and they take it all down to the Sunnyside Trailer Park - Jughead’s new home. It should go without saying that the trailer park is a far cry from the house they’d lived in on Norlin Crescent. But the park’s lack of upkeep and general state of derelict is the last thing that bothers Jughead. No, he’s sure he would feel the same if they’d moved as close as the same street or as far as California. The loss of the house means one thing to Jughead: a severance from childhood.

The trailer only has one bedroom, which his dad immediately offers up for him to use, but it’s nothing like the sanctuary his old room offered, safe from the world and the plague of his past.

He needs a new hobby.

It’s a rare stroke of good luck, Jughead supposes, that he’s able to find something to do with his time in the same hour he starts looking. He’s trying to figure out the best route from the trailer park to Pop’s, and on the way there he passes the Twilight Drive-In, jarringly empty in the daylight hours, its advertising board showing tonight’s movie selection - _Night of the Living Dead_ \- with ‘HELP WANTED’ pinned up below, almost like an afterthought. Without much hesitation, Jughead makes his way through the gate in search of an employee.

It’s a struggle. The place is, by all means, deserted - the projection booth abandoned, along with the ticket stand and the snack bar. Jughead searches what feels like the whole place from top to bottom, finding no signs of life anywhere.

He’s about to give up when he spies a girl around his age riding up to the lot. She’s tall, with long, skinny legs that remain pale although it’s clear her brown hair has been lightened by the summer sun. She doesn’t spot him until she’s through the gate, but when she does she gives him a big, sunny smile, clearly unbothered that some stranger is loitering around what must be her place of work.

“Hi!” she calls out in a perfect customer-service voice as she wheels her bike over to him, even though the drive-in’s not technically open yet and her shift probably hasn’t started. “Can I help you?”

It is then that Jughead realises he hasn’t really spoken to anybody at all since his argument with Archie during last semester. He’s probably forgotten how.

“Uh, yeah,” Jughead says, voice strangled. He clears his throat. “I saw the help wanted sign…”

“Oh, awesome,” the girl says, helping him out. “We need somebody to run the projection booth.”

The girl’s name is Julie Peterson, and she’s in town visiting her grandma for the summer. She goes inside and makes a quick call to “The Boss” and returns triumphant, telling him he’s all clear for the job. And that’s it.

The job is easy - all he has to do is run the projector. There’s another kid who runs the snack bar, some guy who’s in his Geography class at school whose name he can’t remember. Julie does the tickets. She’s cool - she likes the same movies as him, and she has a witty sense of humor. She wears beaten-down sneakers and a single gold chain with a pendant of some description (Jughead’s never gotten close enough to look) around her neck, and she’s usually chewing some kind of over-flavored bubblegum. She hates reading, which Jughead is surprised to find he doesn’t really mind, as it makes for interesting debate about the merits of script versus screen. Jughead likes her as much as he can like anyone these days.

By the beginning of the third week, Jughead’s taken to sleeping in the projection booth. He’s sure Julie doesn’t notice, and the snack bar kid never comes by the projection booth and “The Boss” never seems to visit at all. It’s not a problem until his dad comes looking for him a few days in. Jughead’s surprised he noticed this quickly.

“You haven’t been home in a few days, kid,” FP says as Jughead picks up trash from the previous night’s showing. It’s not a job he’s been told to do, but he does it anyway. “I was just wondering where you were.”

“Yeah, well. I’m fine. So you don’t have to worry about it.”

“You got someplace else you’re living then?” 

“Yeah,” Jughead says, wondering if the lumpy camping bed in the corner of the dark little projection booth counts as ‘living’. “I’m serious, Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

FP looks like he wants to argue, but instead he just nods and lopes away. 

A couple of days later he’s in the grocery store, trying to figure out how best to spread the slim pickings from his measly salary into dinner for the next few nights, when he bumps into Archie in the confectionery aisle. Archie looks at him, surprised. A faint smile shows up on his face. Jughead can’t tell if he’s trying to force it or to stifle a bigger one. They haven’t spoken since the argument. _Don’t make me say it_. Jughead’s surprised to find that he’s not angry.

“Hey, Jughead,” Archie says, and Jughead can’t glean anything from the tone of his voice, can’t read him as well as he used to.

“Uh...hi,” he says weakly.

Archie’s smile falters for a second - just a second, but it’s enough for Jughead to notice - but he persists. After everything, he still persists. “How’s your summer going so far?”

“It’s...going.” He’s making a mess of everything, as usual. He needs to say more, give back. “I, uh...I got a job. At the drive-in.”

Archie nods. “Oh, cool. I’m pouring concrete for my dad and stuff, so…”

“Cool.”

Still more silence builds between them. Jughead wants to take a sledgehammer to it, knock it all down. But in the end, Archie is the one to do it. Archie’s always been the one to do it.

“Look, are you doing anything on the Fourth of July weekend?” Archie says, words rushing out of him in one short breath. The smile is gone, and in its place is something more real, more earnest.

“Don’t think so. Why?”

“I was thinking we could go on that road trip.”

And damn it all to hell, it takes everything in Jughead’s power to resist breaking out into a huge grin. _I’ve been thinking_. Thinking about him?

“Last time I checked, neither of us had our licence,” he says, but it’s a return to irony as a humorous mechanism, not a criticism of Archie’s idyllic plans.

“Yeah, I know,” Archie says, shrugging it off like it’s no big deal. “I thought we could take a bus up to Centerville. Camp out, catch the fireworks, you know?”

He really _has_ been thinking about it. He’s got the whole thing planned out. Jughead wonders how long Archie’s been planning this, how often he’s gone over the idea in his head. He wonders if it follows him around at night when he can’t sleep.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Really?” Any pretense of cool has left Archie’s face. He looks right into Jughead’s eyes, daringly hopeful.

“Yeah, it’ll be good,” Jughead says, and he allows himself one smile. Just one.

“Awesome! Okay, I’ll call you later then,” Archie says, beginning to turn away.

“Alright. See you later,” Jughead replies, and this time, when he watches Archie go, he doesn’t feel like he’s being left behind.

The next day, Julie tells him he looks happier than she’s ever seen him.

“Do I?” he responds, but he can’t keep the smile from his face. 

She grins back at him. “Yeah. It’s weird, I was just getting used to your emo schtick, and now you pull this on me.”

“ _Emo schtick_?” Jughead says, fake-incredulous. She just laughs.

It’s true that his plans with Archie have shifted the whole summer into a new light. Jughead’s never been the happy-go-lucky type, and he’ll never walk around town with a spring in his step, but nowadays he finds it easier to appreciate the small things the world has to offer - the sound of the projector running, the smell of popcorn that lingers well into the dark of the night, the blue tint of the sky in early morning, Julie’s crooked teeth when she opens her mouth to laugh.

It carries him all the way to Friday, where he sits at the bus station, ticket in hand, waiting for a flash of red hair to walk through the door and take him away to a feeling they used to know. But Archie doesn’t show.

Jughead makes his way to the payphone and dials the number he knows so well, and when Archie picks up he doesn’t even think to guess that something’s not right, that things rarely go the way he wants them to, and that’s life. “Hey dude, the bus is leaving in, like, ten minutes. Where are you?”

“Jughead, I’m sorry but-”

It’s amazing how quickly the world can turn on its axis, how half a sentence can make Jughead’s brain feel like it’s filling with ice-cold water and that anything that is beautiful must always die.

“No.” His voice is shaking. He wishes it wouldn’t. “Don’t tell me you’re cancelling on me at the last minute.”

“I’m sorry,” Archie says, but it sounds like he’s very far away, like it’s impossible for Jughead to reach him. “Something’s come up and-”

“What’s come up, Archie? Hm?”

“I- I can’t tell you.”

“Oh really? What are you doing, Archie?” There’s the anger he’d been missing at the supermarket. The anger that had been boiling in him for the entire year.

“I have to help my dad down at the site,” Archie says, but Jughead knows he’s lying, even if he doesn’t really know Archie anymore.

“Sure. Why couldn’t you tell me that, again?”

“Listen, I have to go. I’m sorry, Jughead. Really.”

“Yeah, whatever. Nice knowing you, Archie,” he says, and he hangs up the phone.

What’s rotting is dead. He’s fallen off the cliff but the waters won’t let him drown, they just keep him on the edge of a breath, always waiting to exhale. It’s funny how easy it was to forget just how terrible everything had felt before. _Don’t make me say it_. In the rare moments that Jughead finds himself caring enough to dwell on it, he defines it as ‘emotional amnesia’. For those few days, he’d forgotten this feeling, this constant ache, and now he’s forgotten whatever brief happiness he’d been granted for a few small hours. But the thing is, Jughead doesn’t really care enough to dwell on it. He doesn’t really care about anything anymore. 

Every day, he sleeps late. He does his work at the drive-in. He keeps to himself. He doesn’t listen to music, can’t bring himself to watch the movies that play each night. If Julie had thought he’d had an _emo schtick_ going before, she must think he’s suicidal now. He’s not, just in case you’re wondering. He doesn’t care enough.

On her last day in Riverdale, Julie kisses him behind the ticket booth. It’s his first kiss. She tastes like bubblegum and the thing he’s buried deep inside his chest. She feels like the moments in the sun with Archie last summer. He’s close enough now to see the pendant on her necklace. It’s a heart. _Don’t make me say it_. He kisses her back.

  
  


**v.**

_Oh, I’m looking for affection_ _  
__In all the wrong places._

\- affection, BETWEEN FRIENDS

When summer hits this year, Archie can’t help but think about Jughead. He’s been doing fine with the whole _don’t think about it_ thing lately, but there’s something about the weight of the summer air that takes him back to a year ago, to Jughead’s grins and days by the river. Pouring concrete proves to be of little distraction and allows his mind to wander regularly, so in a bid to focus his thoughts elsewhere, he starts making up little songs in his head. And for the most part, it works.

But he can’t control his dreams. And so, every night without fail, there Jughead is, like a ghost haunting him, bringing with him hopes now lost: a road trip, fireworks, the way they used to be. Come morning, the content of these dreams mostly fades, and yet he is still left with a lingering feeling that permeates his chest for the rest of the day. He can’t escape.

When Archie sees Jughead in the grocery store, he almost gets whiplash. He’s spent so long considering Jughead in an imaginary world that it’s jarring to see him in person again, to be reminded that he’s a real person with a very real autonomy. He hopes Jughead can’t hear it in his voice.

He thinks he’s ruined everything all over again when he brings up the road trip once more. After all, wasn’t that the catalyst that led them to where they are now? But Jughead agrees, and Archie can’t help but let himself hope that this is the beginning of the universe righting itself, everything restored to its natural order, the way things once were, the way they’re meant to be.

He’s wrong, of course.

Two days later Archie is just beginning his walk home from the construction site when a car pulls up next to him. It’s the hottest day of the summer so far. Heat fumes rise from the sidewalk and sweat drips down his back. Archie approaches the car, peering through the passenger-side window to find Ms. Grundy looking back at him. She looks different, long hair flowing down her back and big, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on the top of her head.

“Archie,” she says to him. “What are you doing walking in this heat?”

He cracks a smile, and, reminding himself shockingly of Jughead, sardonically makes a joke. “Uh, building character?”

She lets out the faintest hint of a laugh, and smiles at him. “Do you want a ride?”

And Archie surprises himself by saying sure, okay, and getting in the car. _It’s because it’s so hot_ , he rationalises with himself. Besides, it’s not like Ms. Grundy’s a stranger or anything.

“How’s your summer been going, Archie?” she asks as they drive towards town.

“It’s good. Yeah. Good.”

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “Doing anything interesting?”

“I’m working construction for my dad.”

“Really? A kid your age, spending his summer working? Don’t you get lonely?”

And Archie’s not really sure how it happens, but one second her hand is on his knee and the next second they’ve parked and she’s kissing him. And Archie doesn’t know what to do, can’t tell if he likes it, can’t think, can’t feel, can’t breathe. It feels like his soul is leaving his body, like he’s watching everything happen from outside the car, like he’s looking at himself from afar.

It’s his first time. It’s funny, he’d never even really thought about having sex with _anyone_ before. He knows that’s not typical of boys his age - maybe they’re not _having_ sex but they’re definitely thinking about it. Reggie and Moose sure talk about it like it’s the most interesting topic of conversation to ever grace the halls of Riverdale High. He’s not sure if either of them have done it, though. It’s okay, he guesses. Although he supposes he’s not really paying attention. He doesn’t really want to. It’s nothing to write home about.

She drops him off at home three hours later than he’d normally be. When his dad asks where he’s been, he murmurs something about going to Pop’s with Reggie. He doesn’t linger. He goes upstairs to his room and lies on his bed for two hours, then, finally, drifts off to sleep.

At least he’s not thinking about Jughead anymore.

She picks him up again two days later. This time, they go to her house. The ventilation in her house is shitty, and the air is hot and stuffy, fogging his brain. When he gets home that night, he lies to his dad once more.

After that, it becomes a daily thing. She finds him even on the days he’s not working. If Archie thinks about it - which, honestly, he’s been trying not to - he thinks that maybe this is what he’s been waiting for his whole life. The ability to be so close to someone that you feel like you could climb inside of them and live a life in their shape. Whenever he’d thought that before, he’d never thought it meant sex, but then again he’s never thought much about sex at all. So maybe this is what it means to love someone. Maybe it’s as much in the physical touch as it is in the spiritual connection. Maybe listening and understanding and laughing and smiling and friendship mean nothing at all if that person won’t hold your hand.

“I was thinking we could go down to the river on the fourth of July,” she whispers to him one afternoon.

So he cancels on Jughead. He lies to Jughead. And when Jughead says “Yeah, whatever. Nice knowing you, Archie,” and hangs up the phone, he cries.

He cries because he’s so _fucking_ confused. Because he doesn’t have all the answers, in fact, he doesn’t seem to have any at all. And love - whatever it was - wasn’t meant to be this difficult, wasn’t meant to be so hard for him to understand, wasn’t meant to be anything but easy, and warm, and bright like the sun on a summer afternoon.

When he goes to _her_ house that evening, and she presses her lips to his neck, he cries again, and she hears and pulls back, puts her hand on his cheek. And he looks her in the eyes and can’t help but think that, after everything, after summer, after road trips, after nights in an abandoned tree house, he really doesn’t know love at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everybody who commented on the last chapter, it means a lot and rly encourages me to keep writing <3\. so again, any thoughts you have, i'd love to hear them! xo
> 
> (i'm on tumblr @ultraviolensces and @stxveharrington)


End file.
